ANEET’S POV:

The studio felt different in the soft light of the late afternoon. It was no longer a cage, but a silent observer of a new, unsettling truce. The silence was not empty, but thick with the rhythm of charcoal on paper and the soft drumming of rain against the window. I sat on the floor, the open sketchbook in my lap, a single pencil in my hand. I wasn’t sketching the drive or the box.