DAMIEN

There was no pain.

No fire. No breath. No heartbeat.

Only darkness. And silence.

I’d always imagined death would be loud—violent, chaotic. A scream. A storm. A final battle.

But this?

This was stillness. As if time itself had stopped breathing.

I don’t know how long I floated like that—weightless, thoughtless—somewhere between the world I knew and something far beyond it. Maybe years. Maybe seconds. All I knew was that I was…gone.

Until I heard her.

Not Keilah.

Deirdre.

Her voice wasn’t a whisper. It wasn’t some fading echo. It hit me like a thunderclap.

“Damien.”

I turned—if you could call it that. In this place, there was no...