Chapter 131

*Elora*

Waking up felt like being dragged out of the deepest part of a lake—slow, weighted, unfamiliar.

Not painful. Not like before.

Just different.

The first thing I noticed was the quiet. Not silence. Something deeper. It wasn’t the absence of sound, but the presence of stillness. The kind that sinks into your bones, the kind that makes you hyper-aware of your breath, your heartbeat, the way yo