The room held its breath.
Even the system seemed to pause like it was waiting to see how Dante would respond.
"I remember everything now."
Camille's voice still echoed faintly through the speakers.
Perfectly clear.
Perfectly steady.
Perfectly wrong.
Dante didn't move.
Didn't speak.
Because if he said her name the way he wanted to
If he said it like nothing had changed
He might be lying to both of them.
The girl stepped closer to him, her voice barely above a whisper. "That's not her."
Dante's jaw tightened.
"It's part of her."
"That's not the same thing."
No.
It wasn't.
On the screen, the stabilized signal pulsed again.
Calm.
Controlled.
Like it wasn't struggling to exist anymore.
Like it had always been this way.
The aggressive signal what was left of the other presence lashed violently across the system, unstable and chaotic, trying to force its way back into dominance.
But it didn't matter.
Not right now.
Because all of Dante's focus
All of it
