He was standing in their old house.

He knew it immediately — not from seeing it, but from feeling it. The particular weight of that air. The smell of it. Wood and fabric softener and something cooking somewhere deeper in the house.

The curtains were the same faded yellow.

The floor creaked in the same place near the door.

And there she was.

His mother.

Alive.

Standing in the middle of the room like she had never left it, like she had simply been here all along waiting for him to find his way back. She was smiling — not sadly, not carefully, the way people smile at the sick or the grieving — just smiling. The way she used to before everything. Warm and certain and completely herself.

"Riley," she said softly.

His lips trembled. "Mom…"

She crossed the room and brushed the hair from his forehead the way she used to when he was small — her hand cool and familiar, the most recognizable feeling in the world.

"Continue your studies," she said gently. "I want you to finish college."

"Mom, I did." His voice broke on it. "I did, I finished—"

"Because," she continued, like she hadn't heard, like this was something she needed him to hear for the first time, "that's the only thing I can give you."

Tears rolled down his face.

He tried to reach for her. Tried to hold on.

But the room was already going — the yellow curtains, the creaking floor, her face — all of it dissolving into white, slow and inevitable, the way dawn takes the dark.

"Mom—"

White.

Silence.

And then nothing.