The silence inside Vale Studio didn't feel like silence.
It felt like a pressure chamber.
As the heavy doors closed behind them, muffling the chants and screams outside, Lian felt the sudden quiet slam into him like a wave. The absence of noise wasn't comforting — it was suffocating, too sharp, too immediate after the chaos they'd just escaped.
His ears still rang with the echo of the crowd.
Lian! Let him sing! We're with you!
Voices layered over each other like a storm he had somehow stepped into the center of. Even now, with the doors shut, his bones still vibrated with it. His pulse throbbed behind his ribs like it hadn't realized the shouting had stopped.
Rian remained beside him — tall, steady, silent — a barrier of heat and presence in the cold hallway.
Jun was speaking into his phone already, muttering rapid updates into the receiver, but Lian couldn't process the words. His vision was slightly blurred from adrenaline, or fear, or both.
