The silence deepened.
Not the comforting silence of solitude — this was the absence of everything. A hollow echo where reality should be. Even Ryan's breathing sounded wrong, distant, like it belonged to someone else in another time.
He lay on the floor, twitching.
His fingers grazed the broken floor tile where he had once etched the names of people he vowed never to forget — names of fellow altar servers, friends, strangers who had helped him during the fall of old Canada. They had been his anchors.
But now?
The tile was smooth.
The names were gone.
His memory tried to fight back. Faces formed, voices whispered.
"You remember... don't you? Daniel… Clara… Mi—"
But the last names refused to come.
Each time he tried, his mind bent backward on itself. Like a scratched record. Like a dream slipping from the tongue just before waking.
He screamed again — a raw, breathless sound that didn't echo. Nothing did anymore.
Then—
