Panic pulled me back in.
My body had spent months clinging to this world, refusing to release its grip on everything it knew, and in the moment Everett fell, something fundamental snapped into alignment all at once. My soul and this body had been slowly merging for a year — two things becoming one, the way two rivers eventually stop having separate names — and fear for my son finished what time had quietly started. I was back. Fully, finally, completely back.
I touched my face just to be certain. My fingers felt real against my skin — solid, warm, present. The air felt real. Everything around me was sharp and immediate in a way it hadn't been in months, the world no longer filtered through glass or distance or the muffled unreality of being somewhere between living and not.
I had to find Lewis.
