The field was gone.
What replaced it wasn't darkness.
It was worse.
It was a white void — blinding, disorienting, endless. Like the inside of a mind being unspooled thread by thread. There was no sky. No sound. No gravity, and yet Liam felt his weight tenfold. He stumbled forward instinctively, but his feet didn't land. It was as if he walked on memories, on the smoke of thought.
Then he heard it.
A voice.
Familiar.
Childlike.
"Liam? You forgot me again…"
He spun.
The white haze coiled, shifted — and then parted.
A small figure appeared. A little girl. She couldn't have been older than eight. Her hair was dark, tangled. Her dress was soaked in something red. Her eyes—those eyes—were wide and broken.
Liam's heart dropped.
He took a step back.
"No," he whispered.
"You said you'd never leave me," the girl said. "You said I was safe."
