The first thing Amara felt was the weight of the silence.
It wasn't the empty, hollow silence of the White Void, nor was it the peaceful stillness of the palace Aethel had shown her. This was a heavy, pressurized silence, the kind that exists in the eye of a hurricane. It hummed against her eardrums, a low-frequency vibration that felt like a thousand bees thrumming deep inside her marrow.
Amara opened her eyes.
The ceiling was a blur of recessed LED lights and white acoustic tiling. The medical wing. The real world. She tried to take a breath, expecting the familiar, agonizing burn of fluid in her lungs, the metallic choke of blood that had defined her last conscious moments in the car.
It didn't come. Her lungs expanded with a crisp, cool clarity that tasted of filtered oxygen and expensive antiseptic.
"Amara?"
The voice was raspy, cracked like dry earth. She turned her head slowly, her neck feeling stiff, as if her muscles had been replaced by crystalline wire.
