The night descended with a silence that clings to you like a second skin. Its presence, suffocating, trapping you into a cage of your own mind. The room had fallen into the kind of uneasy quiet that came with forced rest. It wasn’t peaceful. Just… still. The sort of stillness that pressed against the walls and lingered in the air, making every small sound feel sharper than it should have been.

Two days. Two full days since Aksh had been confined to his room. For most people, two days of recovery might have been a relief. An opportunity to rest. To breathe. For Aksh, it felt like punishment. A man who had spent most of his life moving, calculating, making decisions in motion… did not sit still well. The inactivity gnawed at him in ways the pain did not. Dinner sat on the small table beside the bed.