Prologue
Riona
Run.
The word exploded in my head like a scream without sound.
I had to run. I had to get away from that place. Away from the lie of safety, from the illusion of shelter wrapped in soft light and whispered promises. It was supposed to heal me. It was supposed to be different.
But it was not.
It was only another room filled with shadows. Another place where cruelty lingered in the walls, soaked into the air, waiting for me to breathe it in.
My feet slipped against the floor as I stumbled forward. Tears blurred my vision, hot and relentless, streaming down my face. Panic crushed my chest, tight and merciless, stealing the air from my lungs. I could not breathe. I could not think.
I fought.
I kicked. I bit. I scratched.
I became something feral, stripped of reason and dignity, driven by nothing but the instinct to survive. My nails raked skin. My teeth snapped. My body thrashed with desperate strength I had not known I still possessed.
But the bonds tightened.
Some were real. Hands. Restraints. Weight pressing me down.
Others lived inside me. Invisible. Old. Twisted tight around my mind and spine. Past and present collapsed into each other until there was no difference anymore.
There was no escape.
Not really.
Freedom was a word without meaning. Resistance felt like the final flicker of a fire already burning out. Still, I fought. Because stopping felt like dying.
The strike came without warning. Sharp. Sudden. A burst of pain that sliced through the chaos for a heartbeat.
But it felt distant. Removed. As if my body no longer belonged to me.
Then the hands were everywhere.
Rough. Possessive. Inescapable.
They forced me down onto soft sheets that swallowed me whole. The fabric brushed my skin, gentle and wrong, like a burial shroud disguised as comfort.
I screamed.
But only inside.
My mouth opened. No sound came out.
I needed air. I needed space. I needed to breathe before I disappeared completely.
My chest heaved, shallow and frantic. My heart pounded so violently it felt like it might tear its way out of me.
“Enough, Fury. Your fight ends now.”
The voice reached me through the roaring in my ears. Low. Guttural. Heavy with something final. It barely registered, but the words sank deep, curling around my fear.
Was that it?
Was that where it ended?
Something stirred inside me. Something darker. Deeper. Buried beneath layers of terror and pain.
A spark.
Fury. Hope. Life.
I did not want to die.
Not like that. Not silent. Not erased.
Then cold spread through my skin.
A needle. Sharp. Precise.
The sting bloomed, then faded, replaced by a heavy fog that crept through my veins. My thoughts slowed. The panic dulled, wrapped in a suffocating blanket of exhaustion. My body betrayed me, folding inward, strength draining away as if it had never been mine to begin with.
My limbs stopped responding. My voice vanished.
The edges of my vision blurred, bleeding into gray. Darkness pressed in, thick and inevitable.
And in the fragile moment before everything slipped away, I heard it.
A whisper.
I could not tell what it carried. Hate. Fear. Or the twisted promise of mercy.
If trust was nothing but a ghost haunting the ruins of who I used to be.
Was life still worth fighting for?
