ELLIE’S POV
For so long, I had carried the weight of their deaths like shackles locked tight around my soul. Every breath I drew had been heavy with it, every step haunted, every sleepless night consumed by the same cruel thought—if I had been stronger, if I had been braver, if I had been enough, maybe they would still be here.
The lie had burrowed so deep into me that it became a second skin, a voice that whispered relentlessly, telling me I was the reason they were gone.
But as I knelt before their graves, my tears soaking into the earth that sheltered their bones, something inside me shifted. It was small at first, like a crack in stone—but cracks let in light.
“I blamed myself,” I whispered, my voice hoarse, ragged from years of silence. “Every day. Every hour. I thought if I had d
