A Y L A
Morning came without mercy.
I knew it wasn’t night anymore not because of light, there was none but because the air shifted. The dungeon changed at dawn. Colder. Louder. As if the stones themselves woke up and remembered what they were built for.
I hadn’t slept. Not for a single heartbeat.
Every time I closed my eyes, I felt it again, the pull in my chest, the spark that had flared to life when my fingers brushed that necklace. I replayed the moment over and over, torturing myself with the memory of how close I’d been. How alive I’d felt. How quickly it had been ripped away.
My eyes burned, heavy and dry, my head throbbing from exhaustion. My body ached from where the guards had thrown me into this new cell last night, smaller and deeper than the last. No windows. No straw. Ju
