Victor's POV
More than that, I had never even considered it possible.
The awareness crashed into me like ice water, sending shock waves through my system that had nothing to do with the dampness still covering my skin. My gaze snapped back to the mirror, searching my reflection desperately for answers.
There were none.
I appeared unchanged. Gaunt, exhausted, bearing the hollow look that comes from years of being stripped of humanity. Dark circles ringed my eyes, and my cheekbones jutted with a sharpness that spoke of prolonged suffering, but nothing about this seemed new.
This was the version of myself I knew intimately.
Or should have known.
Yet something felt fundamentally wrong.
The wrongness wasn't immediately apparent. Nothing I could identify with certainty. But the longer I studied my reflection, the more it pressed against my consciousness like a persistent ache.
My eyes held the problem.
