Cheap, cramped rooms that smelled of mildew and despair.
Sleepless nights spent staring at cracked ceilings, listening to the silence pressing down on my chest, each breath a fight I was losing.
I had no one. No home. Only the memory of what I had lost—and the knowledge that the world would not stop to care.
I hurt myself just to feel something real, something I could control.
When a therapist offered free sessions, I thought maybe—just maybe—the world was giving something back.
I trusted him.
One afternoon, he offered me tea. I drank it, unaware it contained a substance that left me fully conscious yet completely paralyzed—aware of everything happening around me, but unable to move a single part of my body.
To my horror, my aunt’s husband appeared.
That monster.
I later learned he had conspired with the therapist to lure me—so he could have his way again.
My mind screamed, but my arms, legs, and even fingers refused to obey. I could see, hear, and feel everything... but I could do nothing.
The therapist stood in the corner, eyes averted, fingers worrying at his nails like a nervous child. He didn’t help. He didn’t stop anything. He didn’t even leave.
I remember staring at the ceiling, tears sliding into my hair, my body locked in place while something inside me shattered so completely it never fit back together again.
After that, I stopped believing in repair.
It was that second time that broke me completely. The first had stolen my hearing; this one stole my voice.
I don’t know what they put in my tea. I only know I was awake—aware—but trapped inside my own body. Unable to move. Unable to scream. Forced to witness what was happening without any power to stop it.
Whether it was the substance in my tea, or the unbearable terror of watching the one I trusted—my therapist—stand by as it happened again, I’ll never know. Maybe it was both. Maybe that combination of poison and horror is what finally broke me.
What I do know is this: when it was over, something inside me was permanently damaged.
My voice never came back the same.
At first, speaking felt like dragging broken glass through my throat. Then came the coughing—deep, violent fits that left blood on my palms.
Doctors said my vocal cords were injured, strained beyond recovery. Trauma, they called it. Shock layered on shock until the body simply gave up.
I was still alive.
But the girl who could speak freely was gone.
“Elena!”
Ruslan’s voice cut through the memories like a whip.
The present slammed back into place. Moonlight. Dirt. Graves.
Tears streamed down my face unchecked—I hadn’t even felt them start.
“Please,” I whispered, the word barely surviving the wreckage of my throat. “If that’s really my mother’s... don’t spill it. I beg you.”
He didn’t answer.
He lifted the urn higher.
