Miri's Pov
A week.
It had been a week since Caius went home.
Seven days of silence that crawled under my skin like an itch I couldn't scratch. No text. No calls. Not even one of those half-hearted voice notes he liked to send when he didn't feel like typing and we were bothering him too much. Riven and I had both tried to reach him instead—messages, missed calls.
Nothing.
At first, I told myself he was just really busy explaining things to his parents. Maybe they took his phone and he couldn't reach us. But by the fourth day, that gnawing feeling in my gut turned into something heavier, something darker.
And on the seventh day, Lina's voice confirmed it.
She cornered me outside the library, her hands shoved deep into the pockets of her jacket, expression too serious for her usual breezy attitude.
"I don't know what's going on," she'd said, "but something's wrong with Caius. I can feel it."
