By morning, the numbers had doubled.
Seraphina lay still beneath unfamiliar sheets in Camila's spare room, phone hovering inches above her face, as if distance might soften the reality on the screen. But it didn't.
14.1K
She blinked slowly.
Yesterday it had been 12.4.
The increase wasn't dramatic in influencer terms — she knew that, once — but to her it felt seismic. Movement. Proof. Something alive where everything had once gone quiet.
Her throat tightened.
They hadn't all left.
Sunlight slipped through gauzy curtains, pale gold across the wall. Avelon morning light felt different from Zahara's — sharper, whiter, less forgiving. It illuminated everything without softening edges.
She opened the post again.
Her own face looked back at her — bare, uncertain, eyes still holding that fragile question she hadn't meant to show.
Starting again.
The words felt almost naïve now. Exposed. As if she had admitted something too tender to strangers.
Notifications clustered beneath.
Welcome back 💛
missed you here
you always felt real
so glad you're posting again
Her chest pressed inward.
Real.
They kept using that word.
She had spent so long believing visibility required perfection — lighting, angles, polish, desirability. The curated version Ethan had preferred. The version that drew admiration without inviting scrutiny.
This girl on the screen was none of that.
No styling. No armour. No careful distance.
Just her.
A tremor moved through her stomach — not fear exactly, but something adjacent. The sensation of standing in light after years in shadow.
Her thumb hovered over the comments.
Replying meant stepping closer. Letting them know she was truly back, not a passing reappearance. It meant claiming space again — the very thing she had taught herself not to want.
She swallowed.
Then tapped.
Thank you for being here.
She stared at the words before sending, pulse loud in her ears. It felt disproportionate — this small sentence carrying the weight of something larger. Permission, perhaps. Or return.
She pressed post.
The reply appeared beneath their messages, her name beside it, present tense instead of memory.
Seraphina Vale.
Active again.
A slow, fragile warmth unfurled beneath her ribs — unfamiliar but unmistakable. Not confidence yet. Not safety. But direction.
Outside the window, Avelon moved relentlessly forward.
For the first time since arriving, she felt the quiet, startling sense that she might be able to move with it.