The silence after Sasha's departure was suffocating, pressing down on the ruined penthouse like a physical weight. The air itself seemed to have thickened, becoming harder to breathe, harder to move through. Every shadow felt deeper, every reflection in the scattered glass sharper and more accusatory.
Charles Manson knelt on the shattered floor of what had once been his sanctuary, surrounded by the debris of his former life. Glass shards glittered beneath him like broken stars fallen from some distant heaven, each fragment catching the pale moonlight and throwing it back in cruel, fractured patterns. The portal's vanishing light had left behind more than just empty space—it had carved out a void both in the room and inside his chest, a hollow ache that seemed to expand with every heartbeat.