Sleep didn't come easily that night. It didn't come at all.
Long after Liora had slipped away with one last worried glance over her shoulder, and the others had finally surrendered to their exhaustion, my mind remained a whirlwind of unrest.
The dormitory felt stifling, its stone walls pressing in like a cage. The air hung heavy and warm, thick with the faint scents of sweat, old wood, and the lingering metallic tang of fear that still clung to our clothes.
No matter how tightly I squeezed my eyes shut, the nightmare refused to loosen its grip. It replayed in merciless fragments: the relentless scuttling of Blood Ants across damp earth, Ivy's piercing final scream echoing through the ruins, and that haunting, velvet-smooth voice whispering directly into the core of my being, not once, not twice, but three times, each utterance laced with an otherworldly certainty that made my skin crawl.
