Chapter 190

# CHAPTER 190 **RIVER** I woke to a different kind of silence. Not the silence of isolation I'd once known—empty, suffocating, separating. This was silence like a canvas: calm, stable, waiting to be filled. Eyes open. Medical lights overhead too bright, but not painful like before. Before the procedure, every stimulus felt like shards of glass embedded in my consciousness. Now... now everything just felt *normal*. Normal. A word I'd almost forgotten the meaning of. "You're awake." Hikari's voice, soft but alert. She sat in the chair beside the bed, tablet in her lap, eyes watching me with attention that made me feel both safe and slightly observed. "How do you feel?" I took time to answer, checking myself the way I always did—testing internal connections, searching for signs of cascade, monitoring degradation levels. Nothing. No creeping erosion at the edges of my awareness. No sense of fragmentation beginning to separate my thoughts. Just... stability. "I feel whole," I said finally.