Danielle’s POV

The darkness wasn’t just around me — it was inside me, suffocating every last flicker of light or hope I might once have carried. I stood motionless in that cursed room, a hollow shell swallowed by shadows darker than any night. The very walls seemed to bleed the echoes of my screams — those raw, desperate howls of agony I had released night after night, drowning in my own torment.

Beneath me, blood-soaked drapes clung to my ankles like chains. My battered ...