LILA’S POV
Pain didn’t come all at once.
It came in waves.
Slow. Crushing. Relentless.
Like something inside me was being torn apart piece by piece, and no matter how tightly I tried to hold myself together, it kept slipping through my fingers.
I woke to silence.
Not the peaceful kind.
The empty kind.
The kind that tells you something is missing before your mind can even catch up.
My chest tightened.
Something was wrong.
Something was..
My eyes snapped open.
Stone walls.
Cold floor.
Iron bars glowing faintly with runic symbols.
A cage.
Again.
A sharp breath tore from my lungs as I pushed myself up too fast, dizziness crashing into me instantly. My vision blurred, my body trembling like it didn’t fully belong to me.
“No…” I whispered.
Memory slammed into me.
The forest.
