The smell of antiseptic was the first thing he noticed.
It clawed at the inside of Seagull's nose, bitter and sharp, tangling with the dryness in his throat. The steady beep of the heart monitor thudded against his ears, a slow, dragging rhythm that felt almost louder than the storm of memories pounding against his skull.
He was alive.
Barely.
The weight of the weeks he had lost pressed down on his battered body, heavier than the stiff sheets tucked around him. His limbs felt wrong, bloated, disconnected from him, as if he had been stitched back together with invisible, trembling hands. Moving even a finger was a herculean task.
A weak flutter of his eyelids allowed a sliver of the outside world to bleed through.
The ceiling above him was an endless plain of muted white, with hairline cracks branching across it like spiderwebs. A flickering fluorescent light buzzed faintly, the bulb struggling against its inevitable death. Even that seemed stronger than he felt.
Where am I...?
The thought came sluggishly, swimming through the thick fog of his mind. His body screamed at him with a thousand tiny agonies—the raw pull of healing wounds, the deep ache of broken ribs poorly mended, the dull sting of IV needles buried into his bruised arms.
Weeks. He had been out for weeks.
The realisation trickled in slowly, like water through cracked stone. His skin was too clean, his hair limp against the pillow, trimmed by hands he didn't know. Someone had cared enough to keep him alive, but not enough to free him from the hollow ache rooting itself in every corner of his soul.
A low groan escaped his lips before he could trap it.
The heart monitor quickened, a betraying stutter of sound.
Shadows shifted beyond the curtain drawn around his bed. A nurse's hurried steps shuffled in the distance, then receded. No one came to him immediately. He was alone.
Completely, utterly alone.
Except for the ghosts.
Memories crashed into him, shards of screaming, metal clanging against stone, the suffocating darkness of a room where time had no meaning. Torture wasn't always knives and broken bones. Sometimes, it was silence. Waiting. Wondering if the next breath would be your last.
He blinked slowly, tears pricking the corners of his eyes from the sheer effort.
I wish I had died.
The thought wasn't desperate anymore. It was cold, logical, a bitter fact that had nested deep inside him during the endless nights spent straining to hear footsteps that never came to save him.
But he hadn't died.
No, he had survived. Broken. Hollow. But breathing.
At a cost he hadn't even begun to understand yet.
The door to the hospital room creaked open with an eerie slowness. He stiffened, every nerve raw and ready to snap. His muscles protested, trembling from too much disuse.
He dared a glance.
Only a nurse. Or so it seemed.
She adjusted the IV drip, humming something tuneless under her breath, her face a blur he couldn't focus on. Too much effort. Too much risk. He let his eyes slip shut again, feigning sleep as the woman's soft steps disappeared out the door.
A faint click followed the lock sliding into place.
He was alone again.
Almost.
There was something else in the room.
He could feel it.
A presence. Watching. Waiting.
Breath hitched in his throat as a gloved hand, pale against the sterile sheets, ghosted near his chest before retreating. The hairs on his arms stood up. Every instinct screamed danger.
The voice that followed was barely a whisper, but it coiled in the room like smoke.
"You should have stayed asleep, little bird."
He froze.
Recognition clawed at his fraying mind, but the face remained hidden. A shadow among shadows. The figure stepped back into the darkened corner, unseen but undeniably there.
A chill seeped into his bones.
"You and your sister..." The voice was almost fond. "Such stubborn blood. It's almost a shame what must happen."
The figure lingered a moment longer before withdrawing completely, leaving behind a silence so heavy it felt like a second set of chains.
Seagull's lungs ached with the effort to breathe evenly.
He was supposed to be safe. He wasn't.
The tiny red light blinking above the door, the security camera blinked twice, then died.
No one was watching anymore.
Or maybe, he thought bleakly, they always had been and just didn't care.
A sharp pain lanced through his side as he turned his head weakly toward the window. Rain pattered against the glass, soft but relentless. The city skyline in the distance blurred into streaks of colour under the weeping sky.
A storm had been gathering while he slept.
And it wasn't just outside.
Somewhere deep in his chest, beneath the shattered ribs and battered pride, something fragile cracked. Not from fear, but from certainty.
The cage was closing.
And this time, even Giselle wouldn't be able to stop what was coming.