Liam

Pain is your new language, quiet and intermittent. You woke up not in a hospital, but in your bedroom, which Liam had turned into a fortress with iron shutters. He was trying to lock you away from the world he himself had unleashed. His "family"—the faceless "Ghosts"—were now merely the possible culprits behind your every bruise.

He comes in with a cup of tea you don't like. "You need to drink," he says quietly. He avoids touching you. "Alice Vane has disappeared. She's in a panic." "Did you kill her?" "No. Let him wait. Just like you waited." "I didn't ask for this." "I know. This is for me. So that I don't go crazy from what I've done."

He looks at you, and there's an abyss in his gaze. "Tell me you hate me. Just not this silence."

You remember his tenderness. And now—his command. You drink tea, burning yourself. "I don't hate. I'm afraid. I'm afraid that you are both love and a deadly command. And I don't know how to separate them."

He shudders. Without a word, he gets up and leaves. You are left alone. Your fragile world is shattered. Can love ever become a home again, and not a battlefield where every touch echoes with betrayal?