The girl steps forward and the world behind her dissolves like ink dropped in still water. Ahead stretches nothing — not darkness exactly, but absence: a pale that isn't light and a hush that isn't peace. She clutches her little leather book tighter, its cover cool and real against her palms. Somewhere in this void a word was spoken first. She can almost feel it — a vibration just beneath the silence, like a note held too long to hear. Her boots make no sound. There is no ground, yet she doesn't fall. Then, faint and far, something flickers: a shape, a letter suspended mid-air, or perhaps a figure standing at the edge of something she can't name yet. She takes one more step, and the silence shifts.