‡Chapter Six‡
MARTINA 
A cold, piercing agony tears through my abdomen — a deep, searing pain that drowns out everything else. It’s all I can register at first. Just pain — too much of it, too sharp to process. My body convulses, uselessly trying to fight against it, but it’s a losing battle. My muscles twitch, seizing up, as if they, too, are unraveling. There’s warmth beneath me, seeping into my clothes. My blood. I know that. And yet, I’m freezing.
I thought I was dead.
I was dead.
The memory claws at the edges of my mind, heavy and suffocating. I see myself again — lying on the ground like a worm, cowering, trembling, paralyzed by fear. I should have run. I should have fought. Instead, I stayed there, waiting. Waiting for it to end.
Why didn’t I move?
The question digs into me, sharp and relentless. I try to tell myself it wouldn’t have mattered — that it was already over the moment I fell. But the truth is, I let it happen. I let the fear swallow me whole. And now, in this suffocating darkness, the regret is worse than the pain.
I want to scream. To claw my way back. But I can’t.
I can’t even move.
My fingers twitch, barely responding. My eyelids refuse to lift. My breath comes in shallow, ragged gasps, like my body is still deciding whether to hold on or let go. Everything feels distant, blurred by the weight pressing down on my chest. The world around me is slipping away, and I can’t stop it. I’m trapped in my own broken body, waiting for the end.
But the end doesn’t come.
The memory of it lingers in my bones — the way my body went slack, how the world faded into a rush of noise and silence. It wasn’t peaceful. It wasn’t anything at all. Just an ending.
So why am I still here?
The thought barely forms before it’s swallowed by the haze clouding my mind. My eyelids feel fused shut, too heavy to lift. My breath is shallow, trembling, barely there. I can’t tell if the cold is from blood loss or something deeper — something final.
I’m not alone.
The realization creeps over me slowly, like ice sliding down my spine. There’s a presence. Close — too close. I can feel it lingering beside me, its weight pressing into the air. It’s subtle at first, a faint pressure just at the edge of my awareness. But the longer it stays, the heavier it becomes. The more undeniable.
My ears catch the faintest sound — voices, warped and distant, like they’re coming from underwater. I can’t make out the words, only the rhythm. The weight of them presses into the thick haze clouding my mind, and for a moment, I wonder if I’m imagining it. But no — the sound is there, constant and real.
Friend? Enemy? I don’t know.
I can’t ask.
I can’t even move.
My heartbeat slows, a sluggish, uneven rhythm that matches the cold crawling through me. The pain pulses with it, a slow, throbbing reminder that I’m still alive. But for how much longer? My skin feels wrong — too tight, too cold — and the warmth beneath me keeps spreading. I don’t know how much blood I’ve lost. I don’t know if it matters.
The presence shifts.
I feel it — the subtle disturbance in the air, the faint brush of movement just beside me. My chest tightens, instinctual fear coiling through me even though I’m powerless to act on it. The silence stretches, thick and suffocating, until the sound of breath breaks it. Slow. Deliberate. Close enough that I swear I can feel the warmth of it ghosting against my skin.
My heart pounds against my ribs, each beat sending fresh waves of pain through me. It’s not fear of death. It’s fear of something else — something darker.
The presence leans closer.
The air shifts again, and my muscles lock up even though they barely respond. I want to open my eyes. I want to see it. But my body won’t obey. I’m trapped, helpless, drowning in my own failing body while something waits just out of sight.
The silence stretches.
My breathing quickens, each ragged inhale more difficult than the last. The cold is deeper now, not just in my skin but in my bones. I can’t stop shivering. The pain flares with every twitch, but I can’t stop. I’m shaking, gasping, barely holding on.
And then, in the darkness, a voice.
Low. Measured. Unshaken.
.
.
.
.
.
.
"Wake up, Martina… You’re not done yet."
The words cut through the haze like a knife. They’re quiet, but they don’t need to be loud — there’s a weight to them, a gravity that pulls me back from the edge. My chest tightens, my pulse jumping painfully. The voice is familiar in a way I can’t place, but that only makes it worse.
I want to answer. I want to ask who they are — what they mean — but the words stay trapped in my throat. My body is still failing me, still refusing to respond.
But the fear is back now. Sharp and real.
The weight of those words coils around my fading consciousness, pressing into me, refusing to let go.
Wake up, Martina.
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