Celestine's POV
Kaelen’s questions tear through me one by one, and I feel it happening in real time, the slow, sickening collapse of a structure I spent years perfecting. Every word from him lands like a hammer strike, precise and merciless, aimed not at my body but at the story I have lived inside for so long that it became indistinguishable from truth. I try to keep my face steady, my breathing even, but inside everything is coming undone.
This is not how it was supposed to go.
I am used to control. I built it carefully, layer by layer, lie by lie, always measured, always strategic. I knew which truths to bend, which to bury, which to dress up until even I could look at them without flinching. I knew how to guide conversations, how to soften doubts before they hardened into suspicion.
