— ✦ HER VERDICT, THEIR RUIN ✦ —

── ✦ CHAPTER THREE: THE VANISHING ✦ ──

The heavy iron door slammed shut with a dry, definitive thud, a sound that crashed against the walls of consciousness before echoing through the depths of the place. The screech of the key turning in the lock twice consecutively served as the final shackle isolating this concrete space from the rest of the world. As the last sounds of the guards' footsteps faded down the outer corridor, a palpable, heavy, and absolute silence descended, like a black gelatinous substance filling the void and pressing against her breath. There was no room to catch her breath or gather her strength. The moment the guards threw her inside this cellar, she fell onto the cold dirt floor. The terror that had been gnawing at her features outside in front of Ethan Castellan did not stop; instead, it found in this pitch darkness a fertile ground to amplify and transform into a savage beast. The high humidity clinging to the corners began to seep through the fabric of her dust-stained black coat, and the smell of old, dry earth mingled with cold concrete pierced her nostrils, igniting a violent, uncontrollable tremor throughout her body. The hysterical shivering crawled from her fingertips, which dug into the dirt, up through her arms until it completely took possession of her spine. She tried to curl into herself and shrink back in search of a corner to lean against, but her body refused to obey the commands of her mind. The oxygen inside this cellar seemed to shrink and vanish second after second, leaving behind a sharp, dry lump that settled in her throat, preventing her from swallowing her saliva. Her breath quickened in a terrifying, sudden manner. She began to inhale air in panting, short, and rapid gasps, her chest rising and falling to a manic rhythm without being able to release a single comfortable exhale to empty the suffocating charge accumulating in her ribcage. Her heart was beating violently against her ribs like a trapped bird trying to shatter its cage, and the sound of its thumping became so loud and roaring in her ears that it drowned out the sound of the distant rain outside. In her staring eyes, wide with genuine panic amidst the blackness, the gray concrete walls no longer remained fixed in place. The vision began to narrow and distort at the edges, and the void turned into something resembling a narrow convex lens. She imagined that the four walls were moving at a glacial pace, drawing closer to one another, narrowing the distance between them centimeter by centimeter, to crush her final space and close in on her collapsed body. Her frantically trembling hands reached toward her face, and she pressed her palms hard against her ears, trying to block out a bothersome, sharp ringing that began to echo in her head like grinding metal blades. As the ringing intensified, the fine lines between reality and illusion began to melt away completely in her scrambled mind. The darkness around her was no longer just the absence of light; it began to color itself with strange, terrifying shapes and shadows dancing on the ceiling and in the corners, reaching out toward her with hidden arms. Whispers began to interweave in her consciousness—distant, blurry, and fragmented voices, yet sharp as thorny needles. Confused words spun through the corridors of her fractured mind, intermingling with her manic heartbeat: "Close it... do not let anyone pass..." "The dirt... it is so heavy..." "The exit is locked... she is dead... completely dead..." Her pale fingers moved randomly and hysterically, clawing at the cold dirt around her, searching for any tangible limit, lifting handfuls of dry mud and letting them fall between her fingers as she rocked her body forward and backward in a repetitive, terrified rhythm. Cold sweat was pouring profusely from her pale forehead, mixing with the tears of genuine, honest fear that filled her blue eyes as they stared into the black void. She was no longer able to distinguish between the ceiling above her and the ground beneath her. She felt as though the place were turning upside down, as if the air had turned into heavy concrete blocks landing upon her chest and preventing her movement. The muscles of her throat constricted completely, and she felt an invisible umbilical cord wrapping around her neck to cut off her last breath. In that moment, the final knot in her mind unraveled, and the hell of hysteria ignited. Torn, sharp, and muffled screams burst from her core all at once. The words were incomprehensible, mere death rattles and scrambled vocal noises escaping from between her trembling lips at random: "Op... no... the dirt... the air... it is covering me... get them out... not here... blackness... total blackness!" She was screaming and writhing on the dirt floor, striking her trembling palms against the ground and against the nearby cellar wall, her fingers bleeding slightly from the manic clawing in the mud. The voices in her head turned into a loud roar tearing through her brain cells, and the shadows stretched to erase what remained of her consciousness. Her heartbeat accelerated to a limit the body could no longer endure, and she felt a sudden, sharp coldness invade her limbs, numbing her completely. Black dots began to expand in her narrow field of vision, devouring the illusions and shadows, enforcing a single, constant, and absolute color. Her screams gradually subsided, replaced by intermittent, weak groans. Her trembling hands relaxed and fell onto the dirt, and her body stopped rocking. She tilted her head to the side, and her blue eyes closed slowly and heavily under the weight of complete psychological suffocation and physiological collapse, letting her consciousness plunge into a deep abyss of a coma, turning into a dead, lifeless body at the deepest point beneath the Castellan mansion. When the breath is suddenly cut off, the mind does not stop running; rather, it recoils backward violently, escaping the narrow concrete walls to open the forgotten doors, returning you to the primary hell that forged your features... I was born in a forgotten corner of the world, in the highest northern peaks of Japan, where the village of "Kamikura" lay under a permanent shroud of thick fog and giant cedar trees that blocked out the light. There, time did not move like in other cities; the village was akin to a natural prison constructed of mud and black stone, its people living according to obsolete, petrified laws that were centuries old. In "Kamikura," the man was the absolute ruler, his word a cutting sword worshiped without discussion, while the woman was treated as a sin walking on two feet, or cheap merchandise created to serve the land and the kitchens of the houses, without possessing the right to lift her eyes toward men or even to shape a single breath freely. My name was Hoshi Kim. And there was nothing resembling the brilliance of stars in my life. I did not carry a single drop of their blood; I was the abandoned Western infant found amidst the wreckage of an old accident at the edge of the forest, forced as a servant upon that family of expatriate Korean origins amidst the fanaticism of the village, and forced into that stone house as a servant for free. I opened my eyes from early childhood to my delicate features, which looked strange and prominent amidst the pale faces of the villagers, exhausted from hard labor in the mountainous rice fields. But this natural beauty was not a blessing; it was an early curse that made my father look at me with clear aversion and icy detachment, for he saw in my blue eyes an intrusive Western shame, while my mother turned into a harsh guard who rejected me as a sin imposed by fate upon her kitchen, seeing in me a heavy burden and a deferred shame waiting to be realized. I remember very well the details of our bleak daily life in that cold stone house. In Kamikura, girls were not allowed to go to the small school located at the entrance of the village; the study benches were reserved for males only, who walked in the early morning wearing their warm wool coats and carrying their notebooks with pride, while I stood behind the cracked wooden window, watching them with wide eyes full of questions. My brother would leave with them, leaving behind a mountain of hard chores that I had to complete before my father's return from the fields. The rituals of the other children in the village filled the stone alleys with running and playing with small wooden balls under the drizzle of rain, but the moment I approached the threshold, my father's hoarse voice would lash my ears: "Inside, you sin... the body that does not work brings the curse to the house." Abuse and beatings were my daily bread, which I consumed in binding silence. On one bitter winter night, when I turned ten, my small fingers had become completely numb from the extreme frost while I was cleaning the outer corridor of our house. I tripped unintentionally, causing the clay water jar to fall and shatter on the cold stone floor. I heard no shouting; instead, I felt my father's harsh grip wrapping around the strands of my dark black hair, dragging me brutally and raining down on my bare back with a dry leather hose. My mother stood at the corner of the kitchen, looking at me with eyes devoid of any motherhood—a broken woman who preferred to pass her oppression and coldness onto her only daughter so as not to face her husband's anger. I did not cry for long. I would swallow the wailing and wait for the storm to clear. After my father finished and locked his room door, I would rush toward the back well, take a cloth soaked in ice-cold water to soothe the blood on my face and back, then look at my reflection in the trembling surface of the water... and smile! That smile was my only way to prove that I was still breathing. I did not allow sadness to colonize the lines of my face; I would suppress the pain in the deepest point of my chest, and go out into the world with a strange, provocative vitality to

the villagers. My small dreams were the protective shield that kept me from shattering; I used to imagine the crushing mountains around me melting, turning into an extended green carpet carrying me far away from this prison. My true and only consolation in that dry world was my close friend "Mio," the neighbor's daughter who shared the same dark fate with me. We used to sneak out together in the afternoons, when the men of the village sank into a deep sleep after lunch, and run barefoot over the dew-dampened grass toward an old abandoned wooden hut located at the edge of the dense forest. In that hut, the dilapidated wooden walls listened to our secrets. We would share the small, cold crusts of bread we stole from the kitchens, and weave worlds filled with color and freedom. "Hoshi..." Mio said to me one day as she gently braided my hair using a white mountain flower: "Your eyes are blue and clear like the sky behind the fog... why do you always remain smiling even after your father beats you?" I looked at her, and a playful, light laugh formed on my lips, which I released to break the majesty of the surrounding silence: "Because if I cried, Mio, they would think they had triumphed over me. My dreams are bigger than my father's whip... one day, we will cross these high peaks together, I will go to a distant place, a place where no one has the right to hurt us, where we can run and laugh to our heart's content without anyone accusing us of shame." We used to spend the hours contemplating the narrow spaces between the leaves of the cedar trees, watching the birds fly freely above the clouds, and counting the stars that rarely appeared in the bleak sky of Kamikura. Those innocent moments, and those warm conversations with Mio, were the hidden strength that granted my frail body energy to return every night to that stone house, and stand firmly before my brother's sadistic glances and my father's dry whips, keeping my radiant smile like a time bomb waiting for the right moment to detonate this cursed reality. But I did not know that the childhood years were merely a calm prelude to a black storm, and that my delicate features, which began to mature as I approached the age of eighteen, would transform from a mere strange appearance into a bloody trap bringing the monsters of the underworld directly to our doorstep... The years passed like heavy shadows over the rice fields in "Kamikura," and my growing older meant nothing except that the walls of the prison began to draw closer to my body, which had begun to mature. When I turned fifteen, my delicate features began to take a clearer and more magnificent shape; my skin clear as snow, my blue eyes which maintained a mysterious clarity amidst that bleak environment, and my long dark hair which now extended below my back. This physical transformation was not a cause for pride in our house, but rather a source of suppressed anxiety and permanent apprehension, with which the family triangle (my father, my mother, and my brother) transformed into a united front imposing a ruthless siege upon me. My father's beatings were no longer restricted to small slips, but became a preventive behavior he practiced regularly to extinguish in me any manifestation of rebellion or vitality. My brother, who grew up with the same traits and sadism as my father, relished watching me and tracking my movements; he found special pleasure in violently pulling my braids, or throwing heavy field tools beneath my feet to see me trip, driven by an early male desire to break that hidden defiance he caught glimpses of in my eyes. As for my mother... she was my greatest disappointment. She was not merely a submissive woman, but transformed over time into a harsh guard enforcing the very same laws that had crushed her in her youth. She would enter my room in the early morning, brutally pulling the blanket off me, and scream in a dry tone devoid of any emotional substance: "Beautiful features do not provide bread in Kamikura... stop styling your hair and deviating from the path, for you are nothing but a vessel waiting for someone to fill it and close its mouth." She was the one who urged my father to tighten the noose around me, and monitored the neatness of my modest attire to ensure that my features were completely covered behind dark fabrics so as not to catch the attention of the village men. And the external society of "Kamikura" was no better off than the hell of my home. The village elder, an old man with a wrinkled face who wore ancient traditional silk robes, sat on the veranda of his large wooden house painted in red in the middle of the village, watching the girls with sharp glances resembling the looks of hawks inspecting the flock. His word was the divine law for everyone; and with a gesture of his frail finger, the fate of any girl was decided. In Kamikura, there was one fixed path for all girls as soon as they reached the age of sixteen. They were wedded in bleak rituals, akin to funerals, to men decades older than them, men who owned fields or influence in the village council. I used to see the girls I played with in my childhood being led like sheep toward the houses of their new husbands, with lowered heads and extinguished eyes, only to transform within months into distorted copies of their mothers—pale, tired women practicing the same cruelty and oppression on their small daughters as a kind of recycling of historical tyranny. The old women of the village sat at the thresholds of the houses, chewing tobacco with a rapacious jaw, and directing gloating looks filled with poison toward me whenever I passed before them. They whispered audibly: "Look at Kim's daughter... her eyes carry a rebellion that will bring ruin to her family... she is not like our submissive daughters." And the men of the village, from farmers to guards, looked at me with a suppressed animal desire mingled with contempt, like someone seeing a precious commodity that is forbidden to him until the village elder permits its sale. Amidst this audible and tangible fabric of hatred and surveillance, it was impossible for any girl to breathe, yet I resisted in my own way. I suppressed my sadness in the deepest layers of my chest, and replaced my tears with a rare vitality. I intentionally smiled to my heart's content when I met their gloating glances, and walked with my head held high and regular steps striking the stone ground with a childish pride that had matured before its time. My dreams of crossing over and leaving these mountains were the daily fuel keeping me alive; I saw in the fog of Kamikura merely a temporary curtain that would one day part to reveal to me a vast horizon without bounds. My safe and only refuge amidst this absolute siege was the abandoned wooden hut at the edge of the dense forest, and my pure friendship with "Mio," who grew up with me and with whom our shared worry grew. Mio had begun to wither; her family had begun to hint at marrying her off to one of the older field guards, and she used to come to me, her body shaking with fear. We sat on the wooden floor of the hut, the light rain striking the dilapidated roof with a monotonous sound. My hand extended to grab a small bowl containing some mountain berries I had picked in secret, and I offered them to her to see her smile. "Hoshi..." Mio whispered, her eyes filled with helpless tears: "The village elder visited my house yesterday... he spoke with my father regarding my marriage next month. I am afraid... I do not want to become like my mother... I do not want to spend my life serving a man who beats me every night." I looked at her, and felt a sharp lump tearing my heart, but I refused to show my weakness before her. I took a deep breath, and a radiant smile covered my face, filled with a fake strength and stability for the sake of reassuring her: "This will not happen, Mio... listen to me well, our dreams that we wove in this hut are not mere illusions. They will not be able to break us. One day, and on a cloudy night like this, we will cross those crushing mountains together. I will take you with me to the big cities beyond the horizon, where the lights do not go out, and where we can live as human beings, laughing and walking without anyone watching us." Mio’s hand extended to hold my trembling hands, and she said in a tone mixed with hope and fear: "Do you promise me, Hoshi? Do you promise me not to leave me here alone?" "I promise you, Mio... we will get out together, or we will die together here." We used to spend the hours in that hiding place, planning the impossible escape, and gathering small secrets that granted us the strength to face the reality outside. Our pure friendship and our conversations filled with hope were the only barrier preventing my soul from falling into the swamp of melancholy and despair that enveloped the entire village. I would return home carrying in my heart energy enough to endure my father's whips, my mother's coldness, and my brother's sadism, always smiling, completely oblivious that the fates were composing a terrifying chapter, and that the threshold of our stone house was about to receive a strange visitor... a passing man who was not of the village people, carrying in his eyes a total destruction that would burn Kamikura, burn my dreams, and bury Hoshi Kim beneath the dirt forever... That night was different from all the nights "Kamikura" had witnessed. Since the afternoon hours, a dark black mass of rubble descended upon the mountains, the likes of which we were not accustomed to, blocking out what remained of the slim light, and the routine frost transformed into a raging storm pouring down its rain torrentially, accompanied by howling winds that groaned among the trunks of the giant cedar trees like tormented souls screaming in the shadows. In our cold stone house, the tension had reached its peak. The severity of the insults increased, and the noose tightened around me to the extent that I fe

lt the walls of my small room were about to close in on my chest and suffocate me. I suppressed my consciousness, and waited for the moment when everyone would sink into a deep sleep induced by wine and artificial warmth. As soon as the silence mixed with the sound of the violent rain beating against the roof prevailed, I sneaked out with steps weak as a shadow, opened the wooden latch of the back door, and fled outside under the lashes of the cold rain. I was not thinking of the danger; my mind was running only toward the single refuge granting me the ability to breathe—the abandoned wooden hut at the edge of the dense forest. I had agreed with Mio in the afternoon that we would meet there if things intensified in our homes, so that we might draw from our dreams strength to endure tomorrow. I ran barefoot over the sticky mud, water droplets washing my face and mixing with suppressed tears I refused to let out in front of my mother. My dark coat was absorbing the water to become heavy, but my desire to reach the hut and hear Mio's reassuring voice was faster than the winds that were about to tear the trees from their roots. When I reached the edges of the forest, I glimpsed the dilapidated wooden structure of the hut amidst the pitch darkness. The strange thing was that the atmosphere around the place carried a sinister weight; there was no faint drizzle of light as we were used to, rather the hut seemed like an old grave swallowed completely by the darkness. I advanced toward the door with slowing steps, and pushed the decayed wooden planks which opened with a sharp, dry creak that pierced the sound of the storm outside, and I slipped inside while shivering violently from the cold and the rapid breaths. "Mio..." I whispered in a low voice, trying to call my companion amidst this absolute blackness... but no response came to me. A strange silence prevailed, different from the hut's usual silence—a silence emanating a strange smell, new to this place: the smell of expensive, strong tobacco, mingled with the smell of damp, heavy leather that none of the village farmers possessed. My heart suddenly constricted, and I felt a child's instinct warning her that the hunter had settled in the den. I took a step backward, and wanted to grab the edge of the door to return to the rain, but in a fraction of a second, a flash of lightning gleamed through the cracks of the roof, illuminating the distant corner of the hut and revealing the surprise that froze the blood in my veins. Mio was not there. Instead, sitting on the broken wooden bench was a man I had never seen before in my life. A strange man, a passerby, who did not belong to the nature of "Kamikura" or the exhausted faces of its people. Through the successive flashes of lightning, his physical build appeared massive and strong, wearing a luxurious leather coat in pitch black from which water dripped. His features were sharp, and the gaze of his eyes did not carry the dignity or cruelty of our farmers; rather, his eyes gleamed with a strange, turbulent, and glassy brilliance, filled with a kind of reckless, unbalanced madness that makes you feel direct danger before he moves. He looked like a lost beast that had gone astray amidst the storm and taken shelter in this isolated hut, without caring where he was or who owned this place. I froze in my place, and my eyes met his dark eyes amidst the darkness. In that exact moment, I felt his gaze piercing me, stripping me of the last fortresses of safety built by my childhood. There was no trace of mercy or permission in his face; rather, a slight, sadistic smile, filled with a strange ecstasy, was etched upon his lips when he glimpsed my trembling body and my water-drenched braids under the faint light of the lightning. I tried to scream, but my voice died in my throat and turned into a pathetic rattle. I turned my body hierarchically, and wanted to push the wooden door to flee toward the forest and the rain, ready to face the storm and the mountains instead of remaining for a single second under these cursed glances. But my steps were not faster than his swift, sudden movement. I heard the sound of his heavy footsteps tearing through the wooden floor of the hut, and before my hand could touch the handle, I felt his massive shadow closing in on the space around me, and the smell of his luxurious tobacco overwhelming my breath to suffocate what remained of consciousness. His hand, strong and harsh as an iron clamp, extended and gripped my arm violently to twist it behind my back and drag me backward toward the depth of the suffocating darkness. "Please..." the word came out from between my trembling lips mixed with crying and genuine terror, as I tried to resist and strike his solid chest with my other free hand, desperate to defend my breath and my innocent dreams that I wove with Mio between these walls. But he did not listen. He did not care who I was, or what I was doing here; his turbulent mind was driven by a blind desire and a brutality that knows no bounds. He clamped his other hand over my neck to cut off my screams, and threw my heavy body over the cold wooden floor, shattering in that moment all the smiles with which I faced my father's whips, and vanishing with them my promises to Mio of crossing over. And with the absolute darkness closing over my face, and the start of his savage, fierce assault, the last ray of hope in my soul went out, bringing down the curtain on the delicate girl Hoshi Kim, and birthing in the abyss of that hell the seed of black malice that will soon consume everyone...