Semua Bab Claimed by Death : Bab 31 - Bab 40

Nora’s Point of View By the time I finally lie down, my body feels hollowed out. Not weak. Spent. The kind of exhaustion that doesn’t ask permission before settling into muscle and bone. My limbs ache with a deep, pulsing heaviness, like they remember effort even after the effort is over. My chest still won’t settle properly, breath catching shallow, as if it never quite learned how to return to normal after everything that came before. Bringing her back took more than I expected. Not force. Not strength. Presence. Holding her here, guiding her back into weight, into breath, into the undeniable insistence of being alive again. I can still feel it in my hands. The moment her pulse wavered and then steadied. The warmth returning where there had been nothing. The quiet relief in her eyes when she realized she was still here. That part stays with me. It hums beneath my skin, low and persistent, like my body hasn’t quite decided it’s finished yet. I don’t bother fixing the covers

I wake already flushed. Not startled. Not afraid. Aware. Heat lingers low in my body, breath uneven, sheets twisted around my legs as if my body curled inward before my mind caught up. The warmth doesn’t fade the way dream heat should. It clings, not as sensation, but as residue, like my body remembers something my mind hasn’t sorted yet. Something lingered. The room is dark. Quiet. Familiar. And wrong. Not empty. I don’t move right away. I lie still, listening, not with my ears, but with the part of me that learned tonight that silence can hold things. That absence doesn’t mean nothing happened. Seen. The knowing settles in without panic. Without fear. Just truth. Whatever crossed the boundary of my dreams didn’t end when I woke. Sleep takes me again before I can decide whether I’m relieved or bracing. The space opens without imagery. No bed. No street. No memory shaped by want. Just stillness, held. I am alone at first. The quiet does not react to me. It simply ex

Nora’s Point of View I am awake before I realize it. Morning has already decided itself. Pale light presses at the edges of the room, gentle and uninsistent, as if the day knows better than to rush me. The clock hums quietly on the nightstand. A car passes outside. Ordinary sounds, already in motion. I sit up without thinking, sheets slipping away from my legs. There is no jolt of surprise. No instinct to search the air for remnants of a dream still clinging to the space. Just the steady awareness that something meaningful has already concluded. The room offers nothing back. No presence. No awareness. No sense of attention lingering where it doesn’t belong. That absence feels intentional. I rest my hands briefly on my knees and breathe, slow and steady, grounding myself in the weight of my body, the certainty of the floor beneath my feet. No presence followed me into the morning. But what happened did not disappear, either. The dream did not shatter or pull away. It loosen

Nora’s Point of View After Lesson One, I told myself distance was wisdom. That stepping back entirely was restraint. I convinced myself that removing my hands from the scale was the most ethical choice I could make. If I could not be certain I wasn’t interfering, then the safest thing was not to touch anything at all. That explanation came after the fear. After the moment where I felt myself lean forward again. After I realized how easily certainty had begun to feel like permission. Lesson Two made the cost of that clarity unavoidable. For a while, the logic held. Distance worked. Silence worked. I told myself that the absence of harm was proof enough that I had chosen correctly. Then the messages began to accumulate. They weren’t desperate. That was what made them harder to ignore. Polite inquiries that opened with apologies. Gentle follow-ups that acknowledged I might not respond. People referred quietly by others who spoke of me with care rather than urgency. I recognized the

Kieran’s Point of View I am not meant to feel direction when there is no work to do. When the system is quiet, I remain still. That has always been enough. Silence holds. Order hums. Time moves without requiring my attention. Tonight, nothing requires me. And yet I cannot settle. The sensation arrives without warning. Not urgency. Not command. A pressure, low and persistent, like a tide that does not ask permission before shifting the shore. It has direction. That is what stops me. I recognize threads when they tighten near death. I know the difference between fading and severing, between panic and surrender. This is neither. It is not pulling toward an ending. It is pulling toward presence. Toward her. I remain where I am, testing the feeling by refusing it. The pressure does not increase. It does not retreat. It simply waits, patient in a way that feels disturbingly personal. This has never happened before. Nora’s thread does not behave like the others. It never has. The