Matilda POV

Light thinned into silence.

When my eyes opened, the world had changed. The silver sea was gone; now the air shimmered white and gold, soft as breath. I was standing on nothing and everything, a surface that pulsed with the rhythm of my heart.

“Michael?”

No answer, only a faint echo that came back sounding like me.

Then the quiet bent, and both men appeared again: Michael kneeling, Rhys standing a few steps away. But the colors were wrong this time. Rhys’s crimson light ...