The lights returned without warning.
One moment the apartment had been drained of color and motion, suspended in that impossible stillness, and the next everything surged back at once, brightness flooding the room, the ceiling fan resuming its slow rotation, the refrigerator humming as if it had never stopped.
Sound followed a fraction later, layering itself back into place. Pipes ticking inside the walls. A car passing outside. Someone laughing faintly somewhere down the street.
Reality reassembled itself so cleanly it might have been mistaken for continuity.
Except Alex could still feel the echo of the silence lodged deep inside his chest.
Air tore into his lungs in a ragged inhale. He bent forward in the chair, palms braced against his thighs, pulling breath after breath as if he'd been submerged and only now broken the surface.
Across the room, Mia staggered backward until her shoulder touched the wall. Her fingers spread against the paint, pressing there like she needed confirmation that it remained solid.
For several long seconds neither of them spoke.
Alex's gaze moved instinctively toward the corner where the shadow had unfolded.
Nothing waited there now.
No distortion. No deepening of the light. No suggestion that the air itself had recently learned how to bend.
Just a corner.
Ordinary.
His muscles began to tremble as sensation returned fully to his body, the delayed reaction of nerves catching up to what they had endured.
''Did you…'' Mia started, but the rest of the sentence collapsed in her throat.
She swallowed and tried again, her voice thinner this time.
''Did you see it?''
The question felt fragile, like glass that might shatter if handled too roughly.
Alex nodded once.
Mia's hands rose slowly to her mouth, though they didn't quite manage to hide the sound that escaped her, a quiet, involuntary exhale shaped by disbelief.
''Okay,'' she whispered, but it was less an answer than an attempt to give the moment edges.
Alex turned toward the laptop.
The screen was dark.
Not asleep, empty.
He grabbed the trackpad, fingers clumsy now, and dragged the cursor across the desktop. He opened the transfer folder again.
Park footage.
Sunset.
Trees shifting gently in the evening light.
Mia laughing somewhere just off camera.
Nothing else.
The cave file was gone.
Not closed.
Not corrupted.
Gone, as if it had never been there.
''It was right here,'' he said, hearing how distant his own voice sounded. ''You saw it.''
Mia lowered her hands slowly.
''I saw something,'' she replied.
Not imagined. Not mistaken.
Something.
The word settled heavily between them.
She stepped closer, though she stopped short of touching him, her movements cautious in a way that hadn't existed before.
''Everything stopped,'' she said quietly. ''The fan… the air… even the light looked frozen. I tried to move my hand and it felt like pushing into glass.''
Alex nodded.
''I couldn't move either.''
The memory of that helplessness crawled across his skin again, phantom-tight.
Silence stretched through the apartment, thick but no longer empty.
Finally Mia spoke the thought both of them had been orbiting since the lights returned.
''What was that?''
Alex opened his mouth.
Closed it again.
For the first time since the cave, he found he had no instinct to soften it, no reflex to build a rational structure around what they'd witnessed.
Denial required a kind of energy he no longer possessed.
''I don't know,'' he said.
Mia folded her arms across her chest, not defensively but as if she were holding herself together.
''This isn't stress,'' she said after a moment.
The sentence was quiet, but it marked a crossing.
Before, she had stood beside him in uncertainty, offering explanations like handrails.
Now she stood beside him inside the unknown.
He pushed the laptop away slowly. The plastic casing was faintly warm beneath his fingertips, and the ordinary sensation made his stomach tighten.
''It said my name,'' he murmured.
Mia closed her eyes briefly.
When she opened them again, they looked clearer, frightened, but focused.
''I heard it too.''
Something shifted inside Alex at that.
Hearing her confirm it did not calm him.
It clarified the shape of things instead, like fog lifting just enough to reveal the edge of a drop.
Mia drew in a slow breath.
''We should leave for a while,'' she said.
He looked up.
''Leave?''
''Just… step outside. Somewhere bright. Somewhere with people.''
He glanced around the apartment.
The corners seemed deeper now, the shadows resting heavier than they should.
He nodded.
Outside, the afternoon air struck him with its normalcy.
A neighbor wrestled grocery bags from the trunk of a car. Two teenagers argued lazily across the street. Somewhere, a lawn mower droned.
The world had not noticed their rupture.
They drove without turning the radio on.
The quiet inside the car felt deliberate, not empty, but protective.
Several minutes passed before Alex spoke.
''It knew me.''
Mia's fingers tightened slightly on the wheel.
''Don't,'' she said softly.
''Don't what?''
''Don't start giving it intentions.''
But her voice carried hesitation, because intention was exactly what the moment had suggested.
At a red light she finally turned toward him, studying his face as if committing it to memory.
''We experienced the same thing,'' she said. ''That matters. It means you aren't losing your mind.''
He understood what she meant to offer.
But reassurance was not what settled over him.
The word that surfaced instead was quiet and unwelcome.
Chosen.
He watched the shadows beneath passing cars stretch and fold as the light changed.
They stopped at a café with wide windows that poured brightness onto the sidewalk.
Alex hesitated before stepping inside, the sudden exposure making his shoulders tighten.
Without thinking, he guided them toward a table near the back where the lighting softened and the ceiling hung lower.
Mia noticed.
She said nothing.
Around them, conversations overlapped gently. Cups clinked. Milk hissed through a steamer.
Life continuing, stubborn and unbothered.
Yet Alex felt something inside him had been rearranged, not shattered, but shifted slightly off its original axis.
Mia wrapped her hands around her cup though she didn't drink.
''We need a plan,'' she said.
The word sounded fragile, almost theoretical.
''What kind of plan is there for something like that?'' he asked quietly.
She didn't answer right away.
Finally she said, ''We stop pretending it didn't happen.''
He nodded.
Pretending suddenly felt dangerous.
As he glanced toward the window, his reflection slid faintly across the glass, and for a fraction of a second he thought he saw a darker shape layered behind it, standing just outside the reach of the café lights.
Still.
Watching.
He blinked.
The reflection returned to normal.
He said nothing.
Not yet.
That night Mia left the hallway light on.
Neither of them acknowledged it.
When they lay down, she stayed closer than usual, her fingers hooked lightly into the fabric of his shirt as if anchoring herself.
Alex stared at the ceiling while sleep crept toward him slowly, heavily, like deep water rising.
At some point he surrendered to it.
Sometime later, Mia stirred.
Half-awake, she reached across the mattress.
Her hand met empty sheets.
Her eyes opened.
Alex stood near the bedroom doorway, his back to her, motionless as he faced the dark hallway beyond.
''Alex?'' she whispered.
He did not respond immediately.
For a moment she thought he might be sleepwalking.
Then he spoke, his voice low and distant.
''It feels deeper tonight.''
A chill moved through her.
''What does?''
''The dark.''
She pushed herself upright.
''Come back to bed.''
There was a long pause before he turned.
Even in the low light she could see his expression was calm, too calm, his eyes unfocused in a way that made her chest tighten.
He walked back and lay down beside her.
Within seconds, his breathing settled into sleep again.
Mia remained awake, staring into the dim hallway long after her eyes began to ache.
Because she understood something now with a clarity she wished she didn't possess.
Whatever had entered their lives was no longer just being witnessed.
Somewhere, quietly and without permission…
Alex was changing.