Chapter 183

The Prey

Darkness.

It was all I could see, all I could feel. It swallowed me whole, dragging me down into a void I couldn’t escape. But there were whispers, faint and distant, like ghosts brushing against the edges of my mind.

“Ptichka.”

The word pierced through the darkness, a salvation pulling me toward the sin. His voice. Rough, raw, desperate. It felt like a thread, grounding me in the abyss.

He was here.

I wanted to cry, to reach for him, but my body felt heavy, slanted by the pain and exhaustion that dawdled like darks. The beeping grew louder, faster, reverberating in the silence, and I felt it—life stirring in me, faint and flickering like a dying flame.

I wasn’t dead.

The pain wasn’t as sharp as I remembered, but dulled now to an ache that hummed through my limbs. But the memory of it—the agony, the fear—was still fresh, clawing at the edges of my mind. I’d lost consciousness. I remembered falling, re