The first thing Selena registered was the absence of sound. Not silence—silence implied the potential for noise, a space waiting to be filled. This was something deeper, more absolute. A negation of the very concept of sound itself.
She opened her eyes to nothing. Not darkness, not light, but a colorless expanse that seemed to exist in all directions at once. The void pressed against her consciousness like water against a drowning person's lungs, neither hostile nor welcoming, simply *there* in a way that defied comprehension.
Her body felt wrong. Not damaged, not in pain, but disconnected somehow, as if the laws that governed flesh and bone had become suggestions rather than rules. When she tried to move her hand, it responded after a delay that might have been a heartbeat or an eternity. Time itself seemed negotiable here, wherever here was.
Then she saw him.
