EMMALINE
The world feels like it’s coming apart.
Not all at once — that would almost be merciful. Piece by piece, slow and deliberate, the way a building doesn’t collapse so much as surrender, one support giving way at a time until the whole structure simply ceases to exist. I sit in the damp and the dark and I watch it happen and I can’t do anything but breathe through it.
Each breath burns. The air down here is wrong — thick with rot and moisture and something older underneath that coats the back of my throat and refuses to leave. My hands rest in my lap, trembling slightly, the iron cuffs a constant cold pressure against the raw skin of my wrists. A reminder, as if I needed one, of exactly how much control I have over my own life right now.
None.
The answer arrives the same way it
