The silence in the dungeon was no longer peaceful. It was a vacuum, a hollow space that had swallowed the sound of my son’s laughter. I stood in the center of the cold stone room, my hands clenched so tight that my fingernails drew blood from my palms.
They had taken him. In the smoke and the white light, they had reached into my life and ripped out its only heartbeat.
"Elena."
The voice was low, rough, and carried the weight of a thousand broken promises. I turned around slowly. Silas was standing by the stone archway. He had found a tattered black shirt to cover the raw skin of his chest, but nothing could cover what he had become.
The light from the flickering torches hit his new face. It was a battlefield of flesh. The scars were thick, jagged lines that pulled at the corners of hi
