The Last Station Standing
She was watching her father’s fishing boat disappear into a gray, hungry fog.
“I’ll be back before the first star, Elara,” her father’s voice echoed, distorted and deep, as if he were speaking from underwater.
She felt the crushing weight of that day—the weeks of waiting, the phone calls that never came, the realization that the ocean had swallowed her world. The Heart was feeding on this. It was analyzing her capacity to endure Pressure. Not the pressure of the water, but the pressure of the soul.
“Why are you here, Little Star?” a thousand voices whispered in her mind at once. It was the "Heart" speaking through her own memories.