Ethereal | Twilight |

010

After school, Sora dragged himself home on faltering legs, the last traces of the drugs having leached from his system, leaving him brittle—stripped bare and dangerously out of sync. His mother was there, present in flesh if not in spirit, adrift in the same heavy stillness that blanketed every inch of the house like fog refusing to lift.

He didn't speak. There was no point. The silence was already loud, thick with things neither of them would ever name. He kept his hood up, not out of defiance, but because meeting her eyes felt like opening a wound. Everything around him felt wrong, just slightly out of focus, like he'd fallen out of step with the world and couldn't find his way back. That strange, weightless disconnect wasn't new, but it was sharper now—like his body was here, but the rest of him hadn't caught up. Most likely the drugs, still echoing through his nerves, pulling him just far enough from reality to feel like a stranger inside his own life.

A few unread emails from Bella Swan sat in his inbox, untouched and indifferent, each more distant than the last. They weren't really messages—more like formal reminders disguised as concern, all circling the same subject he had no intention of revisiting. He was supposed to meet with her today, go over what happened, sift through the mess like it hadn't already calcified inside him.

But Sora had buried the memory days ago, packed it away under the weight of fatigue and that familiar dullness he couldn't shake. The details felt slippery now, like fragments of a dream that refused to hold their shape. He didn't want to remember Edward had threatened him. Not with overt malice, but with a measured finality that left no room for argument. Told him to stay away, as if the command alone could contain what was unraveling beneath Sora's skin. And Sora, no longer entirely human—no longer reducible to something as manageable as that—felt the shift respond before he could intervene. It was a visceral, involuntary flicker, a warning from the thing he was becoming, something older, darker, and far less reasonable.

He hadn't meant to react. In truth, he hadn't meant to do anything at all. But his body moved without consultation, governed by an instinct he hadn't yet learned to master. That loss of control was why he left—not with purpose, but with urgency, as though fleeing wasn't a choice but a necessity. He hadn't walked away so much as been pushed from within, driven by a presence that no longer cared for civility. Whatever he was now, it wasn't human. And it certainly wasn't harmless.

Edward couldn't tell her the truth. He was bound by oath, by whatever sacred promise kept him leashed. And if he had broken it, if he had opened his mouth to spill even a fragment, Sora knew he would have heard it already. Here you go, baby—cleaned up, more vivid, smarter vocabulary, but still true to what you wrote:

Bella arrived a few minutes later, just after he'd showered. His skin was flushed from the scalding water—too hot, too harsh—in a desperate attempt to scrub away whatever Edward's presence had awakened in him. His mother was still asleep, which made answering the door easier. Bella stood on the other side, her expression unreadable, eyes brimming with unspoken questions. He let her in without a word. He had time. Time enough to sit with her in the quiet, to listen to whatever it was she came to say. Got it, baby. Here's the revised version with sharper detail, more vivid language, and layered metaphors to bring Bella's presence to life without changing the meaning:

Bella stood on the other side, radiating an awkward tension so thick it clung to the air between them. Her skin was pale, not the soft kind, but the sickly hue of paper left too long in the rain—washed out and fragile. Her nose, small and slightly upturned, pointed toward him like it was searching for answers in his face. Her eyes—wide, brown, too heavy with knowing—blinked slow, like each one took effort.

Her lips were a mess. Split at the center, bruised along the edges, the color of dried rose petals pressed into forgotten pages. Uneven and trembling, they looked as if she'd been biting them too often—maybe out of guilt, or maybe just to feel something. She'd seen Sora before. But weeks of shifting had changed him, carved new definition into his frame like a sculptor hacking away at something too soft. And now, she looked at him like he was unfamiliar—like she was trying to memorize a stranger. Her gaze trailed without apology, slow and tentative, her breath catching in her throat, as if it wasn't sure whether to exhale or hold on.