Everything was quiet.
Velyrian floated in a strange stillness, like time had stopped.
He couldn't feel his body.
There was no pain like he was expecting… there was nothing.
'So… this is it?'
He thought he had died.
And in that weightless silence, memories began to flood him.
His daughter's smile before the curse twisted it.
The nights he spent researching, the failures, the letters he wrote with trembling hands.
Regret settled over him like a heavy fog.
He had always known it would end this way.
But then something shifted.
The silence cracked.
He could feel again… something distant and wrong, like his body didn't belong to him anymore.
'Wait… I'm not dead?'
Confused, he tried to open his eyes, but the world twisted before him.
Light bent, and the space around him pulsed like a living thing.
Then, with a sharp breath, his eyes snapped open.
He wasn't in his office anymore.
