Evangeline watched her for a long beat, a silent predator waiting for the next move, but the scene didn't hold.
Without warning, the world buckled. The courtyard, the lovers, the very air—it all tore open as if the fabric of reality had been shredded by an unseen hand. Time stalled, then collapsed into a choking, absolute black. Within this void, memories began to bleed into one another, swirling in a chaotic vortex of sensory wreckage. The only sound that survived the purge was a thin, ragged whimper, a sob that cut through the stillness before being swallowed by the echo of distorted, mocking laughter. It was as if the mind she was trespassing in had finally lost its grip on the chronology of its own trauma.
Evangeline didn't flinch. She stood in the center of the dark, unmoving and indifferent, waiting for the tides of the girl's subconscious to settle.
When the light eventually returned, it was thin and jaundiced, barely reaching the corners of a new, cramped reality.
