For a moment after she posted, nothing happened.
Seraphina stared at the screen, heart beating far too fast for something as small as a photograph. The flat felt unusually quiet around her, as if the city itself were holding its breath.
Then her phone vibrated.
One notification.
She swallowed and tapped.
aria.loves: you're back???
Her pulse jumped.
Another vibration.
keisha.k: missed your posts so much
Then another.
omarstyles: finally
The numbers at the top of the screen began to change—slowly at first, then faster. Likes climbing. Comments appearing. Her name moving again through other people's attention.
Seraphina's throat tightened.
"They remember me," she whispered.
Camila leaned over her shoulder. "Of course they do."
"But I stopped," Seraphina said. "I disappeared."
"And people still waited," Camila replied gently. "That's what happens when you were real with them."
The word settled somewhere deep.
Real.
On the screen, hearts continued to gather beneath her bare-faced image. Messages stacked—some simple, some emotional, some from usernames she dimly recognised from years ago.
you always felt different here
glad you're okay
we missed you, sera
Her vision blurred.
She hadn't known anyone had noticed she was gone.
Hadn't known her absence had left any space at all.
Her thumb hovered over the comments, afraid to scroll further—as if too much proof of being seen might undo her completely.
The phone vibrated again.
This time the notification banner lingered longer, heavier.
ethan.ashford liked your post.
The air left her lungs.
Everything inside her went still.
Camila saw it instantly. "What?"
Seraphina couldn't speak. She turned the screen.
Camila's jaw tightened. "Of course he did."
The tiny red heart beside his name felt enormous. Intrusive. As if his presence had reached all the way into this new beginning and placed a hand on her shoulder.
He had seen her.
After all this time—he had seen her first step back into the world.
Her chest filled with something tangled: anger, shame, memory, ache.
"No," Camila said quietly, reading her face. "He doesn't get to do this."
Seraphina forced herself to breathe.
Below his name, more notifications kept appearing. More hearts. More words. More people who did not belong to her past.
She looked at the photo again—bare, uncertain, alive.
Then she locked the screen.
"He doesn't own this," she said softly.
Camila nodded. "Exactly."
Outside, Avelon moved in restless light.
Inside Seraphina, something fragile and stubborn rose again—shaken, but no longer invisible.