The room was small. Too small. The kind of space that made the air feel thinner, like it was being rationed. Dani paced the same short length for what felt like the hundredth time, her footsteps soft against the scuffed concrete floor. The walls were dull gray, chipped in places, stained in others, with the kind of wear that whispered of a hundred other people who’d been trapped here before her.
There was one barred window—narrow and set so high she had to strain just to glimpse the corner of a sky that never seemed to change. A single metal chair was bolted to the floor, its legs rusted and scratched from years of frustration. No bed. No clock. No indication of time passing at all—just the slow, steady erosion of her sanity and the thudding weight of her own thoughts.
She sat in the cor
