Chapter 96 - Chapter 96 - Secret Told

Azaria found that sleep was a fickle friend that night, constantly dancing just out of her reach no matter how she adjusted her pillows or tried to slow her breathing. She spent hours hunched over the screen of her laptop while she clicked through link after link. Her research had led her down several rabbit holes, but she ultimately came up short of anything definitive, leaving her with only a small handful of vague probabilities that didn't quite explain the sound of snapping bone she was so certain she had heard. By the time the early morning light began to bleed through the edges of her curtains, her eyes felt scratchy and heavy, yet her brain was still humming with restless energy. She finally realized that she couldn't dig any deeper into the whole thing without losing her mind to exhaustion, so she decided she needed to force herself to rest and reset. Luckily, it was a weekend.