I woke up the next morning with a strange stillness inside me.

It wasn’t peace.

It wasn’t certainty either.

It was resolve.

The kind that settles quietly after a long war, when your heart is tired of running in circles and your mind finally whispers, enough. I lay on my bed for a long moment, staring at the ceiling, again. The cracks there seemed more familiar than usual, like old companions who had witnessed too many of my sleepless nights. Outside my window, the city was waking up ...