The steady beep of the heart monitor was the only sound in the sterile hospital room, each note a countdown Amanda Smith couldn't bear to hear.
She sat by her mother's bedside, clutching Athena Smith's frail hand between her own trembling fingers. Her mother's once vibrant complexion was now ghostly pale, her breaths shallow and labored.
"Please don't leave me, Mom," Amanda whispered, her voice breaking like fragile glass. Hot tears streamed down her cheeks, falling onto the starched white sheets.
Athena's eyelids fluttered open, and she gazed at her daughter with eyes clouded by pain but filled with enduring love. Her lips moved slowly, fighting for every word. "My dear Amanda... you must be strong..." Athena rasped, her voice no more than a whisper. "And know... I will always love you."
The machines around them beeped faster, louder, a frantic crescendo of alarms. Amanda tightened her grip, but before she could call for help, Athena took one final, shuddering breath, and then, stillness.
A hollow silence filled the room, louder than any scream.
"No," Amanda choked out, her heart shattering into pieces too small to ever gather again. She leaned forward and pressed a trembling kiss against her mother's forehead, her tears soaking into the cold skin. "I love you, Mama..." she whispered through the storm of her grief.
Memories flooded her mind, warm arms after a bad day, whispered stories during late-night storms, laughter over burned cookies and secret movie nights. A lifetime of love, gone in a single heartbeat.
—
The afternoon sun spilled through the tall windows of the Smith estate in the wealthy suburbs of S City, casting long, golden rays across the marble floors. Yet the mansion felt colder than ever.
It had been four days since Lady Athena's passing. Grief clung to the grand halls like a heavy fog. Amanda's anguished cries had echoed through the corridors, and now the mansion stood steeped in silence, mourning with her.
At sixteen, Amanda felt like a ghost wandering through her own life. Her world, once filled with her mother's laughter, had collapsed into an endless, aching void.
"Please, Father, tell me this isn't real," Amanda sobbed, her body shaking as she clung to David Smith's chest.
Her father, who had always seemed invincible in her eyes, held her tightly, his arms stiff with his own silent grief. His hand stroked her hair in slow, trembling motions. "I wish I could, my dear," David said hoarsely. "But it's real. Your mother is gone."
Amanda buried her face in his shoulder, the reality pressing down so hard she could barely breathe. "Amanda," David murmured, pulling back slightly to look into her tear-swollen eyes, "your mother wouldn't want you to drown in sorrow. She's still here... in our hearts. She'd want you to live, to be strong."
But Amanda couldn't imagine how. Her mother had been her light, her compass. How could she navigate a world cloaked in darkness?
"We'll find a way. Together," David vowed, though even he sounded uncertain, as if trying to convince himself.
Around them, the servants kept their heads bowed, sorrow woven into every silent step. They loved Lady Athena dearly. Many had been orphans she had sponsored, given a second chance at life by her generosity and kindness.
Maria, the head housemaid, wept quietly behind a marble pillar, clutching the gold locket Lady Athena had gifted her on her eighteenth birthday.
Lady Athena's absence had left a hollow wound no wealth could ever fill. The entire household could only pray that their young lady, and their grieving master, would somehow survive this terrible storm.
But deep in Amanda's heart, she felt it, something inside her had shattered that would never fully heal again.
The day the light died, a new, harsher world had begun.