In the void, Pryce had achieved something impossible
"I destroyed you," he said, thinking of Elara. "Not because you deserved it. Because I was broken and didn't know how to be loved without trying to control it."
He thought about each victim across the centuries. Thomas. Catherine. James. Michael. Jennifer. Kai. All innocent. All destroyed by his inability to let go.
"I told myself it was love," Pryce continued. "That keeping you meant loving you. But love doesn't trap. Love doesn't kill. Love doesn't violate someone while they sleep and call it devotion."
The admission was agony. Facing what he'd truly been—not a romantic tragic figure, but an abuser who'd dressed his violence in poetry and passion.
"Rhys was right to send me here," he whispered. "I don't deserve forgiveness. Don't deserve peace. I deserve to sit with what I've done until I truly understand why it was wrong."
Time stretched endlessly.
And slowly, painfully, Pryce began to change.