*Audra's POV*
The ropes bit deeper every time I moved. Every shift pulled the fibres tighter against my skin, digging through the fabric of my pants until it felt like they'd become part of me. I couldn't tell how long I'd been pushing…
I tried to calculate how long he'd been gone.
Ten minutes?
Twenty?
Time had started bending in strange ways, stretching and collapsing until it felt like the same moment was repeating endlessly. The shadows on the floor hadn't moved much, but I couldn't trust that either. My mouth was dry, my tongue thick and heavy, every swallow scraping down my throat. The quiet pressed in, dense and alive. Every creak of the boards, every sigh of the wind through the cracks, felt sharper, as if the whole building was listening with me, waiting for him to come back.
However long, my legs burned as if it had been hours.
I forced myself to stop. To breathe.
