Lila’s POV
I stand frozen, my eyes fixed on the sight before me—Claudia being carried away, her cries lost in the chaos that swallows everything around us. Her words echo through my skull like a curse that refuses to fade.
“It’s on you if anything happens to my child!”
The words replay over and over, curling around my mind like a film caught on loop, refusing to end. My breath trembles out of me, uneven and shallow, each inhale burning like guilt itself. I can’t seem to pull myself out of it—the echo of her voice, the fear in her eyes right as she fell.
The world around me fades—the distant voices, the footsteps, even the wind—until there’s nothing but the pounding in my ears.
Then, suddenly, a touch breaks through the fog—a firm, grounding hold on my shoulder. I flinch, spinning arou
