But the sound fell into the chamber and died there, small and unanswered. No echo. No acknowledgment. No one reached for it. No one caught it. The words landed on the stone like dust and were absorbed into the dark.
She might as well have said nothing at all.
And in that moment, chained beneath their gaze, bleeding into the cracks of a floor that had seen centuries of suffering, watching another woman stand where she should have been, stand in the warmth of a mother's hand that had once been hers—
Liora felt something inside her begin to slip.
Not her identity.
But the certainty of it. The bone-deep, unquestionable knowledge that she was Liora and the world agreed. That certainty, which she had never had to defend, which she had never even thought to question, began to crack.
And that was worse than any torture.
Because pain could be endured. Pain could be survived, measured, pushed through. The body was built to carry suffering and keep going.
But this—
