I used to think I'd already seen my worst nightmares—that I'd lived through the sharpest, bitterest parts of my life. I was wrong.
Every time, it was a new flavor of pain. Like a cursed video game that got harder with every level.
My birth… I think that's where it started—a battle I never chose. The umbilical cord felt like the thread of my fate, cut the moment I arrived, and I was left with endless hell.
I don't know how much time passed. Days and hours stopped mattering. I waited for my showdown with that devil.
He didn't come. Days crawled by in darkness and dream-sickness. I saved my strength. I ate every scrap of the filthy food they shoved at me; when a guard tossed in an extra piece of stale bread, I picked it up off the dirty floor and finished it, ignoring his smirk.
It didn't matter how much that poisoned little box made me suffer, how many nightmares I had, how hard I yanked at my hair trying to rip the images out of my head.
One thing mattered: I would get out of this place, and I would kill those bastards with my own hands.
I carved lines into the wall with a small pebble; the scraping steadied me, narrowed my mind to nothing but tally marks. The vent had died a while ago—no sound now, not even its broken grind.
I glanced at the tiny butterfly I'd sketched, struggling to fly across poured concrete. Poor thing—born in a haunted place. The smallest things I touched seemed to inherit a curse.
My patience was gone. Time to play my card.
As I darkened the butterfly's wing with the pebble, my jaw clenched.
Footsteps neared. A moment later, the iron door opened with an ugly scrape. Probably toilet time. The guard kicked a filthy copper pan through the hatch. The stench hit my nose; my face twisted.
He was about to shut the door when I rasped, voice rough and strange, still working on the butterfly's antennae:
"Tell the doctor I'm ready to give him the code to unmask Ashur. But I'll do it myself."
The guard hesitated. Through the square slot I could only see his tall boots.
"Tell him it's his last chance," I said, the hate plain. "Otherwise, I don't talk. Ever."
After a long pause, the metal door slammed.
Darkness poured back in—but I was used to it now. In the dark, I could see better.
So much better than before.