Broken by One, Desired by All
she hissed, each syllable like poison scraped across stone.
I didn’t even glance at her. She wasn’t the threat anymore.
Because all around us, the chamber doors were opening, the illusions spitting out the others.
One by one, the students stumbled out of their prisons, some crawling, some staggering upright as if they’d been dragged through a battlefield. A girl clutched her arm like it was broken, her eyes wide and glassy with panic. Another boy tore at his own shirt, muttering under his breath, “Not real, not real, not real.”