At five o'clock in the morning, before the first light of dawn, Mira rose quietly. She dressed swiftly, careful not to disturb him, and packed her suitcase. Standing in the doorway, she turned back for one final glance at the home they had built together—the memories etched into its corners, now too painful to bear.
"Elias," she whispered in her heart, "I will never return. From this moment on, let us be strangers, with nothing to do with each other ever again."
The icy winter wind bit at her cheeks as she stepped into the dark, her figure swallowed by the vast emptiness of the early morning.
