Morning didn’t arrive loudly.

It slipped in quietly through half-drawn curtains, laying thin streaks of gold across Amara’s living room floor like something careful not to disturb.

She woke slowly.

Not from an alarm.

Not from restlessness.

Just from the soft awareness that sleep had ended.

For a few seconds, she didn’t move.

Didn’t open her eyes fully.

She simply lay there on the couch, wrapped loosely in the blanket she must have pulled over herself sometime during the night.

A faint ache lived in her neck from sleeping in an awkward position, but it didn’t bother her enough to shift immediately.

Instead, she let herself hover in that fragile...