Flashback ( PDFDrive )

Monster?
It sounded so ridiculous when he said it.
Never mind. Forget I—
No, Sophie. Tell me about the monster.
She was too tired to argue. And honestly? It felt good to say it. Like
she was grabbing some small bit of control.
So . . . I’m guessing you think I’m losing my mind, she said when she’d
finished.
She shaped the words into a tease. Masking the fear tangled around
them.
Hiding the nagging worry that wondered if this time the Neverseen
really had broken her.
No, Magnate Leto said with the kind of absolute conviction that
made her meet his gaze. That’s not madness, Sophie. That’s your
subconscious trying to make sense of the echoes—assigning a word to what
you’re experiencing to help you wrap your head around it. But the monster
isn’t real.
Really?
She’d known that, of course—but it felt so, so good to hear it.
Tell me this: Can you actually see the monster? Can you describe what it
looks like?
She couldn’t.
It had no shape. No detail.
That’s what I thought. It’s a monster by name alone.
I don’t understand what that means.
It means it’s a monster because you say it’s a monster, and that’s how
your brain is choosing to understand it. But in reality, it’s simply an echo of
whatever trauma the shadowflux caused.