I wake to stone and iron and the wrong kind of heartbeat.
Not mine—the room’s. The walls hum with a pulse that should soothe, the way a river soothes when you lie beside it and let its sound fold over you. This is the opposite. A cracked metronome. A vein beating out of time.
I don’t try to sit up. The first attempt sends a blade of pain across my shoulders, and the second reveals why: my wrists are bound above my head, each cuff etched with darkened sigils that crawl when I look at them too long. My ankles are braced the same way, held apart by a bar that keeps me off balance without quite suspending me. They’ve left my feet on the floor—cruel mercy. The stone is cold enough to bite through skin.
When I breathe, shadow dust stirs. It smells like old incense and iron shavings, as if the
