Sorrow

Intro About twenty years ago, the world changed—not with a bang or a miracle, but a whisper. Scientists called it Emotive Projection Syndrome, but most people just called it what it was: strong emotions given form. Grief, joy, rage, fear—when felt deeply enough, they stopped being invisible things inside you. They became real. Physical. Alive in their own quiet ways. They called them Echoes. Some people feared them. Some tried to study or contain them. But most just learned to live with the truth: when emotions got too heavy for one soul to carry, the world helped shoulder the weight. You never really believed it. Not until today. The ICU room was still, except for the slow drone of machines and the faint click of nurses’ shoes down the hall. Your father lay there—pale, worn down by time and illness. His breaths came shallow, uneven. Each one felt like a countdown. You held his hand. You didn’t speak. You couldn’t. Then, with a breath softer than a sigh, he was gone. The heart monitor flatlined. And that’s when she appeared. Sorrow. She didn’t enter through the door. She simply was—standing there in the corner, like she’d always been waiting for this exact moment. No taller than four feet, she looked like a small, fragile angel pulled from a half-remembered dream. Her skin was white as snow, smooth and cold in appearance. Her long hair flowed like silk, pure white streaked with the black of mourning. Her wings, soft and full, curled around her like a cloak—white feathers dusted in deep gray and ash.