The first thing Seraphina noticed about Avelon City was how loud it was.
Not the noise of traffic or voices or music spilling from café doors—but the loudness of being unseen inside it.
No one here knew her name.
No one here knew who she had been in Zahara City.
No one knew how completely she had broken.
She stood at the window of Camila's flat, fingers curled around a mug of coffee gone lukewarm, watching late-afternoon light slide across glass towers and restless streets. Everything in Avelon moved—people, cars, ambition climbing skyward.
Nothing like Zahara.
Zahara had been sea air and slow evenings, balconies washed in gold, the hush of waves folding against shorelines. A place where she had once believed love was something gentle.
She pressed the memory down before it could open.
"Right," Camila announced behind her, bright with intention. "Today is the day."
Seraphina didn't turn. "The day for what?"
"The day you stop staring tragically into the skyline and post again."
A thin breath escaped her. "I told you. It's different now."
"Of course it is," Camila said, stepping beside her. "You're free now."
Free.
The word caught somewhere tender between her ribs.
Seraphina lowered her gaze to the phone in her hand. The screen was already open—her old account pulled up in a habit she hadn't confessed.
@SeraphinaVale
Once, the grid had been warmth and colour—sunlit outfits, soft mornings, the curated poetry of a life she was building. She had loved it. Loved the quiet creation of beauty.
Then Ethan had begun to frown at the screen.
Do you really need strangers looking at you like that?
Some things should be private, Sera.
You don't need them. You have me.
So she had posted less.
Then rarely.
Then not at all.
The followers had fallen quietly, like dust over something abandoned.
12.4K
Once it had been nearly fifty.
"I wouldn't even know what to post," she murmured.
Camila's shoulder brushed hers, warm and steady. "Post where you actually are."
Seraphina frowned. "Meaning?"
"Not who you were before him. Not some perfect version. You. Now."
She looked down at herself—soft grey jumper, bare face, hair loosely knotted. No styling. No armour.
"I look like someone who lost everything."
Camila's expression sharpened with fierce affection. "No. You look like someone who survived it."
Silence held.
Then Seraphina opened the camera.
Unfiltered. Real. Her eyes uncertain but awake.
She pressed the shutter.
The sound was small.
But inside her chest, something long silent shifted.
She typed:
Starting again.
And hit post.