The air was razor-thin, every breath like swallowing glass.
Alessia stood frozen, her body halfway between violence and surrender. Her brother — Eren — knelt on the cold floor, his arms bound, blood seeping from a gash above his brow. His eyes, identical to hers, flickered with a haunted recognition.
He whispered her name behind the gag.
And that was all it took to break her open.
The years she spent convincing herself he was dead. The nights she’d dreamed of his face only to wake in silence. The guilt that clawed through her every time she saw a sibling reunited with another and knew she never would. All of it poured into the moment like gasoline meeting flame.
Mother watched her with clinical calm, the way a surgeon observes a patient’s final heartbeat before death.
“You were alway
