June – POV
I don't know when it started.
At first, there was nothing but the endless dark—the gnawing shadows whispering in the voice that had become my only company. They wrapped around me, heavy and suffocating, telling me to stay. That the light would burn. That there was nothing good out there anymore. That even if there had been, it was gone now.
And I believed them.
Because I couldn't feel anything. Couldn't want anything.
I had forgotten my own name, my own face.
All that was left was Number Twelve.
And the voices chanting softly, sweetly, "Ours… ours… ours…"
But then… something changed.
It started like the faintest brush of warmth on skin gone cold for too long.
A whisper—not the hungry, tearing whispers of the shadows—but softer. Lower.
A voice I should have known, buried under so many layers of pain and noise that at first it felt like nothing more than a ghost.
"June… baby… come back to me…"
I didn't recognize the words.
