Chapter 28
AVERY’S POV:
科家 49%合
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I prayed for death as I lay curled up in the cage, crammed into the trunk of the Devil’s car. Breathing my last in that suffocating darkness seemed preferable to whatever awaited me. The rage I’d glimpsed in his eyes, paired with the distant explosion that rattled the air, left no doubt–whatever came
next would make death scem merciful.
Every attempt to escape him had failed. I was back in his grasp, trapped like an animal awaiting slaughter.
The ride stretched on endlessly. The cramped space stole the blood from my limbs, leaving them numb and useless. Every bump in the road jarred the cage, the jagged edges of the metal scraping my skin. Pain pulsed through me, but even that was better than the terrifying silence of what lay ahead.
I tried to focus my mind elsewhere on the fleeting moments of happiness I’d once known. Memories of innocence, laughter, and safety became my refuge, though they felt like they belonged to someone else entirely.
Time blurred. The car slowed, inch by inch until it finally came to a stop. My breath caught in my throat. The stillness was more terrifying than the
motion.
I waited, every nerve bracing for what was to come.
The trunk creaked open, and the world outside came rushing in too bright, too loud, too cruel. I winced as the sudden burst of light seared my eyes, a jarring contrast to the suffocating darkness I’d been confined to for what felt like an eternity. My brain hadn’t yet caught up with the abrupt shift when a heavy, coarse blanket was thrown over the cage. The darkness returned, thicker and more oppressive than before, but this time, I could feel movement.
The cage was hoisted up roughly, each jolt sending fresh pain through my already battered body. I couldn’t see anything, but the hurried footsteps and muffled voices painted a grim picture. The metallic clang of the cage against the carriers‘ boots echoed in the silence, a cruel reminder of my imprisonment.
“Daddy! Daddy!” A cheerful, familiar voice rang out, cutting through the oppressive dread like a beam of light. My heart clenched. Sea.
“Hi, my princess,” Axel’s voice answered, soft in a way I’d never thought possible. That gentleness was a razor to my nerves, slicing through the fragile calm I’d tried to cling to.
“What’s that?” Sea’s curious voice asked, her innocence wrapping around the question like a shield against the harsh reality.
“Nothing to worry yourself about, honey,” Akel replied, his tone deceptively soothing. “Just some wild animal that needs extermination.”
The word landed like a slap. Extermination. That’s how he saw me. Not a person, not a woman with a past and a future, but a wild animal to be put down.
The footsteps carrying me away quickened, and Sea’s voice faded into the background. I contemplated screaming, calling out to her, begging her to save me. But what would that do? Drag her into this nightmare? Expose her to the truth of what her father really was? My silence felt like the lesser of two evils, though it tore me apart to stay quiet.
The path
my
Sheath the cage shifted from smooth to uneven. The incline steepened, the air growing damp and cold. I felt every jarring step as the men
me showed
no regard for the bruises already plooming across my skin. The cage slammed against their legs, sending sharp vibrations through y, but they didn’t care. I was cargo, nothing more.
J
And then the blanket was ripped away.
The light blinded me once again, sharp and unrelenting. This time, it was a cruel, artificial glare meant to expose every shadow, every flaw. I blinked rapidly, my eyes struggling to adjust, my vision swimming with painful spots.
When I could finally see, I wished I hadn’t.
The room before me wasn’t just a prison–it was a place built to break people. Rusted iron bars lined the walls, each cell holding a human–shaped shadow, their hollowed eyes watching me with pity and indifference. Chains hung from the ceiling like grotesque decorations, some still holding their prisoners in agonizing suspension. Blood–old and new–streaked the walls and floors, painting a story of pain that needed no words.
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Chapter 28
This wasn’t a dungeon; it was a slaughterhouse. A place where hope came to die.
As we moved deeper into the hellscape, the air was filled with the stench of sweat, blood, and fear. I heard the muffled sobs of those locked away, the occasional scream of someone enduring whatever horrors lay beyond the cells.
Normal people would have been begging by now, trembling in terror, pleading for mercy. But I wasn’t normal anymore. Prison had stripped me of that. I’d seen enough cruelty, enough inhumanity, to know how to swallow my fear. My stomach churned, bile rising in my throat, but I forced it down. There was no room for weakness here.
Still, I couldn’t stop the cold sweat that slicked my skin or the tremor in my hands as my mind raced. This was beyond anything I’d faced before. Prison had been a nightmare, but this? This was designed to break the soul, not just the body.
The cage stopped moving abruptly, the sharp clang of metal against stone pulling me from my thoughts. One of the men leaned down, his face obscured by shadows.
“Welcome to your new home,” he sneered, his voice dripping with mockery.
I didn’t respond. I didn’t even flinch. What was the point? They’d already taken everything else from me. What more could they do? They continued moving again.
The cage bumped and rattled as it moved through another narrow, dimly lit corridor, and I caught glimpses of what lay in the subsequent cell. What’s the true toll of Axel’s reign of terror: how many lives lost, and how many identities forever destroyed?
Untold numbers of people stripped of their dignity.
The next one we passed had a man huddled in the corner, his body covered in deep gashes that oozed blood, staining the filthy floor beneath him. His face was sunken, his eyes hollow and vacant, as if his soul had already escaped, but his body remained trapped.
The next cell held a woman suspended by chains, her arms stretched so tightly above her head that her shoulders looked dislocated. She wasn’t screaming anymore–her voice was gone. Instead, her chest heaved with shallow breaths, and her head lolled to the side, her broken body a testament to the horrors she had endured.
The stench of the place hit me hard, a nauseating mix of decay, urine, sweat, and iron. It clung to the air like an oppressive fog, seeping into my pores and making me feel like I was drowning in filth.
We passed another cell. This one was worse. A man’s limbs were twisted unnaturally, his wrists and ankles bound to different corners of the room. He moaned in agony, his voice hoarse and raw, as if he’d been screaming for hours. His eyes met mine for a brief moment, and what I saw there shook me to my core: a plea for death, for release.
Cell after cell, the sights grew unbearable. One woman was clawing at her own skin, her nails bloody, her movements frantic and unhinged. Another man sat slumped against the bars, his face mutilated beyond recognition. The floor of his cell was littered with teeth, his or someone else’s, I couldn’t tell.
The sounds were relentless: sobbing, screams, the clinking of chains, and the low moans of those too broken to resist anymore. It was a symphony of suffering, the kind of noise that gets under your skin and stays there, echoing in your mind long after the silence returns.
I tried to keep count of the cells of the people inside them, but eventually, I lost track. The horrors merged together until I couldn’t tell one face from another, one scream from the next. My mind numbed itself to survive, but my body betrayed me–my hands trembled, and cold sweat soaked my skin.
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