The air shimmered with an unsettling stillness.
Not silence.
Stillness.
As if the world had taken a breath… and forgotten how to exhale.
Jay's boots tapped against the warped floor of the fractured academy corridor, now adorned with twisted doorways that opened into both past and future. Some glimpses showed burning skies, others the stillness of a spring evening that had not yet happened.
He walked past them.
He was done chasing ghosts— at least, that was what he told himself.
But then he heard it.
"Alicia?"
He turned.
There was no one.
Yet that single name, spoken in a tone he knew too well, echoed faintly through the air like a question carried from a different timeline.
He blinked and for the briefest moment— he saw her.
Not Alicia.
Not Rei.
Not Echo.
Not even the Observer.
But her.
A woman in royal robes, standing before a storm of glass. Golden hair. Stern eyes. A voice that trembled only when the world was not watching.
Jay had never met her in this realm.
