"AAAAAA"
Tila's endless screams shredded the stale air inside the box—raw, unrelenting, animal.
They bounced off the mold-crusted walls, a haunting cry that pierced the silence like jagged glass, echoing back in distorted waves that clawed at the senses.
The darkness pressed in from all sides, thick and suffocating, alive with memory, wrapping around them like a shroud woven from forgotten nightmares.
Kael, holding her close in the box's cramped belly, felt her body tremble violently in his arms, her every shudder transferring through him like an electric current.
His empathetic resonance pulsed from his hands—gentle, subtle—not to overpower her fear, but to wrap it, soothe it, dull it, like a warm blanket laid gently across barbed wire.
It wasn't enough.
Not at first.
Her terror was like an unhinged hurricane.
Wild. Feral.
