Chapter 84

Alessandro

Something about this place felt familiar—too familiar—like a nightmare I’d lived in once and never truly left. I could feel the smoke before I saw it, heavy and clawing down my throat. I could hear voices, some yelling, some crying, and through it all, the slow, deliberate sound of footsteps dragging across scorched earth.

Darkness moved like a thick tide over my body, the kind that swallowed sound and sense and memory. I was weightless and heavy all at once, as though buried under the entire weight of my own mind, and I couldn’t tell if my lungs still worked or if this was death pressing its cold mouth to mine.

I was a boy again, half collapsed in the hallway of the old mansion, my fingers blistered from heat, my knees scraped from crawling. The fire was everywhere—on the walls, in my chest, in the screams of the people who once called this house home. I could still feel the sharp bite of the glass I’d crawled across, the sting of the flames lick