There wasn't the slightest tremor on Willabelle's face. While storms raged within me, she stood before me in the middle of the night, as cold as a black monolith.
"I had to do it," she said. Had to… For what? For whom?
My blood boiled, my mind clouded with rage. Yet my body remained heavy as stone, my arms and legs bound as if in chains.
"Whose will be you carrying out, Willabelle? Ronald's? Or your own?"
Her eyes glimmered. Her voice, just above a whisper, mingled with the wind sighing through the forest: "My only interest is your survival."
Her words lodged in my throat. Alongside my anger, an empty void opened in my mind. My survival? Yet it was she who had struck me down, left me paralyzed on the ground.
I tried to frown, but even the muscles in my face refused to obey. A broken syllable slipped from my lips: "Nonsense…"
