Sasha’s POV
I couldn’t breathe.
Each inhale scraped like broken glass down my throat, catching on the blood and bruising that lined my ribs. The thin shift they forced me into clung to my back, soaked in a mixture of sweat and reopened wounds. Every lash still sang across my skin, raw and gaping beneath crusted blood.
The cold stone at my back felt like knives, each edge cutting deeper with every shallow breath. My muscles were too torn to tremble. My body had moved beyond pain into something deeper, darker—detachment. Like I was hovering just above the shell of me, watching it decay.
The chains were merciless. They wrapped around my wrists, iron carved with runes that pulsed whenever I even thought about resistance. My arms were stretched above me—numb, dead weights—but the sigils st
