The headlights cut two pale tunnels through the dark, but they only reached a few feet before the blackness ate them. Elias pulled the car to the shoulder of the empty road and killed the engine. The silence that rushed in was absolute—no crickets, no wind, just the soft tick of cooling metal.
He walked until the road was a guess behind him. The darkness pressed against his eyes like a blindfold. He stumbled over a root, caught himself on a trunk, and kept going. No destination. No map. Every step felt like falling upward into something vast and indifferent.
Good , he thought.
He lay back. The clouds began to break. One star appeared, then two, then a scatter of ancient light. They had been there the whole time, burning behind the veil.
Then he heard it—a low, humming note, like a cello string plucked far away. It vibrated in his ribs. He stopped. The sound didn’t repeat. But for a moment, the pressure in his chest eased.