Two AM. The substation breathed the quiet of a place that had given up expecting rest. Arden sat at the table with her ledger open and a pen she couldn't make move. The page waited, blank and patient as a debt collector who knew you'd pay eventually.
She tried to write her sister's name. The pen hovered. Her hand remembered the motion four letters, specific curves but the shape looked wrong. Like a word from a language she used to speak fluently and now could only half-recall.
She wrote: L
Stopped. Was it L or I? The memory blurred at the edges, softening like a photograph left in sun too long.
Her throat tightened. Not grief, exactly. Something smaller and sharper. The absence where her sister's name used to live.
Kael's voice came from the doorway. "You okay?"
She didn't turn. "I'm trying to remember why I'm doing this."
