Chapter 226: The Slow Unraveling Nina’s POVThe cell had not changed in any measurable way since Elena’s visit. The same gray walls stared back at me every morning. The same iron bars divided the small square of space I was allowed to occupy. The same single bulb hung overhead, flickering when the power dipped, casting long, restless shadows across the floor. Yet everything inside me felt subtly shifted, as though a seam had been pulled loose and the entire fabric of who I was had begun to fray at the edges. I woke each day with the same routine—sit up on the cot, swing my legs over the side, place my bare feet on the cold concrete, breathe in the damp air—but the weight of that routine no longer pressed down with the same force. It simply rested.I ate the food the guards brought without tasting it. Bread that had gone slightly stale, thin soup that tasted of salt and nothing else, an apple or a pear when the season allowed. I chewed slowly, deliberately, counting the bites the way
Read more