Day Five.
She woke to whispers.
Not one. Not two. Dozens—a swarm of hissing voices curling around her like smoke, crowding into her skull. Low, rasping, ravenous.
Disgusting.
Tainted.
Empty.
He was never meant for you.
You’ll never be touched again.
She clutched her ears, fists tight over the sound, but it didn’t stop. It throbbed in her bones. Wormed its way beneath her skin. Her own voice cracked into a scream—raw, high-pitched, useless.
Still, the voices fed.
She bolted barefoot into the street, hair wild, skin fever-hot, still in the torn shirt she’d worn for days. People stared. She didn’t care. The world was noise. Colour. Chaos. Wrong.
She stumbled into the university library, driven by instinct, by some desperate thread that maybe, just maybe, something in those pages co
