Her eyes flickered up to mine before darting away again, as if ashamed to speak.
I kept running my fingers through her hair, untangling the knots as she spoke. Her voice was small but each word felt heavy, like she'd been holding them in for years.
"Then they came one night," she continued, her voice shaking. "Destroying my family of three... They called themselves the defectors. They said girls like me were 'chosen to be remade.'" Her hands clenched, her nails digging into her palms. "But they didn't remake us to become better. Rather they broke us and drowned us in their rituals until we couldn't remember who we were. They stripped away everything… and filled us with rot."
Her words spilled like pieces of a memory she'd been forced to bury. I paused, cloth still in my hand, the ache in my chest heavier with every word she spoke.
