MARGARET’S POV
The silence had stopped suffocating me.
Nothing about my confinement had improved.
The room was still as barren as ever—the same narrow bed, the same cold stone walls, the same artificial light that refused to tell me whether the world outside was day or night.
And yet…something inside me had.
I sat at the edge of the bed, hands loosely folded in my lap. My gaze rested on the faint scratches etched into the stone floor—marks I didn’t remember making, but had likely traced absentmindedly during the early days of my imprisonment.
Back when I had still been reacting. Panicking.
I exhaled slowly, the breath leaving me steady, measured.
That version of me felt distant now.
Because time, no matter how distorted it seemed in this place, had given me something I had not expected: clarity.
When you are stripped of movement, of distraction, of choice—when there is nothing left but your own thoughts—they sharpen whether you want them to or not.
And mine had.
