Awakened
I whispered into the suffocating quiet, my voice trembling under the heavy weight of two lives worth of grief and betrayal.
In my past life, I had died without ever stepping back into this room. I had allowed them to lock it up, seal it off. I had died thinking I was powerless, thinking that my mother had left me behind in a world full of monsters without giving me a shield. I had been so foolish, so paralyzed by fear, so desperate for a father's love that never existed.
I reached up with trembling hands, feeling along the carved lower edge of the heavy wooden frame until my fingertips pressed against the hidden mechanical latch buried deep within the woodwork.