The night arrived soon after.
One moment, the world still carried the faint warmth of evening, and the next, it felt as if something unseen had drawn a curtain over everything.
Even the air had changed. It felt heavier, thicker, as though it carried a warning that only the body could understand.
Juli had improved far more than I expected in just a single day. When I first made her practice, she could barely control a handful of insects without losing focus halfway through.
Now she sat a few steps away from me, her small figure surrounded by a restless, crawling army that moved as if it shared a single mind.
And in a way, it did.
Her mind.
I watched carefully as a group of beetles crawled across the cracked pavement, while a cluster of moths hovered lazily above her head.
A line of ants moved in perfect formation along the edge of a broken wall, turning corners without hesitation, as if they were following a map only Juli could see.
