ALEXANDER
The ceiling is the first thing I see.
Wood grain, uneven and familiar, the kind of surface you only notice when you have nothing else to look at and nowhere to be. I stare at it for a long moment while the rest of me catches up — the softness beneath me, the weight of clean sheets, the air that smells like pine and woodsmoke and something faintly, achingly familiar.
Not Dante’s dungeon.
Not the humid sickening smell of that place, not the stone walls and the depressing ambiance.
Something in my chest unlocks so slowly it almost hurts.
I’m back.
The thought arrives plainly, without drama, and I lie there and let it settle into me the way warmth settles — gradually, reaching the places that had gone coldest without me noticing.
Alexander’s pack.
I try to move and my body l
