Darkness rushed in first.Not the comforting kind—thick forest night, moon‑lit shadows, breath of pine—but the kind that swallowed sound and space and the edges of memory. The kind that felt constructed, humming with a wrongness she remembered too well.Kiera drifted in it, weightless.Or buried.She couldn’t tell which.Somewhere far above, she heard Ronan’s voice—raw, panicked—a sound she had never imagined could come from him.“Kiera—!”Then stone.A crack.Pain.And everything fell away.She woke on cold metal.A ringing sound pulsed in the edges of her skull—steady, mechanical, like a heartbeat forced through wires.No. No, no, no— She wasn’t here again. She couldn’t be here again.Her fingers curled against the floor, expecting moss, soil, the rough grit of cave stone.Instead—Smooth metal. Familiar. Sterile. Wrong.Her throat closed.This isn’t real. This isn’t real. Her mind whispered it, but something inside her—something buried by needles and commands—rose like an ech
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