Controlling The Shadows

The hospital room was sterile, the air thick with the smell of antiseptic and the hushed murmurs of anxious relatives. Sharanya Singh, freshly awakened from a three-year coma, blinked slowly, her eyes tracing the unfamiliar lines of the ceiling.

A man stood by her bedside, his hand outstretched, a hopeful smile on his face. "Sharanya?" he whispered, his voice laced with a raw emotion she couldn't place. "I'm Aman. You're awake."

But the name meant nothing. A vast, echoing void stretched where memories should have been. Her gaze flickered to the worried faces of her parents, then back to the stranger. "Who are you?" she croaked, the words tasting foreign on her tongue. The silence that followed was deafening, broken only by the frantic beeping of a nearby monitor.