Aria had learned, a long time ago, that the quiet nights were the ones that revealed the most about her life.
And right now, sitting alone outside Reynolds' office with only the faint hum of the building for company, she felt that familiar heaviness settle over her, the one that always came when she worked too late and had nothing left to distract her from her own thoughts.
She kept typing anyway.
The motion was automatic, the kind of muscle memory you develop after years of doing a job because you must, not because you want to.
It wasn't like she'd planned to end up here. Her life had never followed a plan.
Growing up, she'd always been the reliable one. The one who stayed behind after school to help clean up. The one who worked weekends while her friends went out. The one who didn't have the money or the time to chase anything as vague as passions.
By the time she graduated, responsibility had already carved its shape into her life. Bills. Rent. A younger sibling who needed help. A mother who was always tired. A father who was never around.
So, she had to take whatever stable job she could find. Secretary positions. Administrative support. Things that were predictable, steady, safe.
Her fingers paused above the keyboard.
She'd never say it out loud, hell, she barely admitted it to herself, but this place had changed her in ways she didn't expect…
Not because the job was easy. It wasn't. If anything, she worked harder here than anywhere before. But the difference was simple.
Reynolds didn't treat people like tools.
He didn't vanish at six on the dot and leave his team drowning in unfinished work. He didn't blame others when things went wrong. He didn't raise his voice. He didn't make excuses.
He stayed, even on nights like this, grinding away at whatever was on his desk because he believed he should never demand a level of effort he wasn't willing to give himself.
He never said those things. He didn't have to. And yet being close by his side made her see his tiredness, his exhaustion, he was just like everyone of them, his workers… Giving his life for money just because he once had none.
And because of that, she never felt ridiculous for staying late. She never felt unseen. She never felt like her entire life was slipping away through cracks no one else could see.
Her eyes drifted to the dark glass of his office door. The faint glow of his desk lamp spilled across it, flickering a little as if fighting exhaustion the same way she was.
She wondered how someone like him ended up working the same ridiculous hours she did.
Maybe he was running from something. Maybe he simply didn't know how to stop. Maybe success came with its own kind of loneliness, the kind that kept you awake long after everyone else had gone home.
She understood that more than she wanted to.
She rubbed her temples, leaning back in her chair.
She hadn't properly slept in… she couldn't even remember. There was always something to finish, something to sort, something that couldn't wait until morning.
It wasn't like she had much waiting for her at home anyway. A small apartment. A bed that felt emptier each passing year.
Work had gradually swallowed everything else.
Her gaze slid to her reflection in the dark window, tired eyes, hair coming loose, posture slightly slumped. She didn't look like someone who had mastered her life. She looked like someone who was trying not to fall behind.
"Get it together…" she murmured under her breath.
She reached for her mug of coffee she had made a few moments prior, only to find it empty.
Great. Another small inconvenience in a life built around tiny, endless obligations.
That was when something strange tugged at her awareness.
It wasn't sound. Not exactly. More like… a shift. A pressure. A subtle, unnerving feeling, like the air had thickened around her without warning. Her shoulders tensed as she glanced around the empty office.
Nothing changed.
Nothing moved.
But something felt wrong, off.
Her pulse picked up.
Maybe it was exhaustion messing with her. Maybe she'd finally hit her limit. God knew she'd been on the edge of burnout for months. Still, she couldn't shake the sensation, that quiet instinct that something in the world had just tilted a degree off center.
And then, without warning, the vase fell.
Not gradually. Not with any obvious cause.
The sharp sound tore through the quiet like a blade. Aria jerked upright, heart pounding as the ceramic shattered across the tiled marble floor. For a moment, she just stared, wide-eyed, trying to make sense of what she was seeing.
Then it hit her.
A force that rippled through the floor and straight into her chest, squeezing breath from her lungs.
She stumbled, gripping the edge of her desk as her vision blurred. The lights flickered, once, twice, and then the world seemed to fold inward.
She gasped for air as her lungs collapsed and everything she knew slipped away.
Thoughts scattered.
Her sense of balance vanished.
It was a single, quiet realisation that her life, the one built through pure effort, sacrifices, and those long nights, was being ripped away before she ever got to see what it might have become.
And then everything went dark.
Not silent.
Not empty.
Just… gone.
When she felt herself again, when sensation crawled back into her limbs and breath returned to her throat, she was somewhere else entirely. Somewhere colder. Older. Nothing like the world she came from.
She didn't know where she was. The new world she stood in seemed so odd, so different, so cold, yet it had this lingering familiarity to her life.
All she knew was that her life, the one that was quiet, tiring, and predictable, had finally ended in a single shatter of ceramic.
And something new had begun.