The screech of metal tearing through silence jolted her awake.
The cell bars slid open with a groan, like a beast yawning after centuries of slumber. Cold air rushed in, wrapping around Heira like chains refusing to let go. Her eyes snapped open, sleep still clinging to the corners, but her instincts were sharper than ever. She shot upright, heart hammering in her chest. For ten years, the sound of sliding bars meant only one thing—trouble. Another punishment. Another round of cruelty from the guards. Another soul-breaking command to endure.
Her hands instinctively reached for the thin, worn vest folded at the foot of the cot. But instead of barked orders or a baton raised in threat, a face emerged from the corridor's dim lighting. It wasn't just any face it was Officer Trennor, the one who rarely spoke unless it was necessary. His eyes met hers, unreadable but not unkind. That alone sent a ripple of confusion through her.
"You're free to go," he said.
Five words. Just five. Yet they crashed into her like a storm, splintering her internal walls. Her knees buckled slightly, and for a second, she thought she might collapse. Was this a trick? A test? She blinked hard, expecting him to laugh and slam the door shut again.
But the door remained open.
She inhaled sharply. Freedom. The word didn't feel real in her mouth. She had chewed on it for years, whispered it like a prayer. Now it had manifested, unannounced, almost cruel in its sudden arrival. Tears threatened to rise, but she swallowed them down. Not yet.
Trennor turned, and she followed barefoot, silent, ghostlike. The corridor felt longer today, and the buzz of the flickering fluorescent lights overhead echoed like alarms. She passed cells filled with the shadows of other women, some watching her with hope, others with hollow resignation.
At the release desk, her hands trembled as she scrawled her name across the documents. The guard slid a worn plastic bag toward her. Inside were fragments of a life left behind—her ID, a watch with a dead battery, a folded photo of her younger self with her dog, a cheap lipstick which used to be expensive nearly worn down to the base.
She held the photo for a moment longer than she should have. The memory was a knife now.
Then the gates.
Massive. Black. Cold as the void. They groaned as they opened, mechanical and final. Beyond them lay silence, fog, and uncertainty. She hesitated at the threshold, glancing back one last time. The prison behind her was more than concrete and iron. It had been her coffin. But stepping out… that was resurrection.
She crossed the line. The gates slammed shut behind her like the last line of a eulogy. For a moment, she stood still, breathing in the early morning air. It smelled like dew, dust, and something foreign—possibility. Her lips curled into a hesitant smile.
But it vanished as quickly as it came.
No car waited.
No arms opened wide.
No family.
No sign that anyone had even remembered.
She stared down the empty road, her spine stiffening. What had she expected? That they'd be there with balloons? That her father, the great Darnell patriarch, would sweep her up in a rare moment of softness? That her mother would cry and whisper "Welcome home"?
She began to walk.
Three brutal miles stretched out before her, each step scraping against cracked pavement. The road was deserted, dusty, sun-bleached, silent. Even the birds seemed to avoid it. Her feet ached in the worn shoes they'd given her, the sun climbing higher, hot and indifferent.
She counted her steps to stay focused.
One hundred.
Five hundred.
One thousand.
Then she saw it.
A truck. Ancient. Rattling. Dusty. It bounced along the road as if the earth itself tried to reject its presence. She waved it down, her arm weak but persistent. The driver slowed to a stop. His face, leathery and indifferent, peered down at her. He said nothing, only jerked his head toward the passenger side.
She climbed in without a word.
They rode in silence. The hum of the engine and the occasional cough of the exhaust were the only sounds. He didn't ask her name. She didn't offer it. Still, when they approached the outskirts of the Darnell estate, he slowed without prompting.
"You live here?" he asked gruffly.
"I used to," she replied.
He raised a brow but didn't press. She thanked him quietly and stepped down. The truck coughed once more, then disappeared into the horizon.
The mansion rose like a forgotten palace massive, looming, and surrounded by fences and silence. The gates had changed. Higher now. Cameras tracked her every movement. She approached them, sweat clinging to her skin. Two unfamiliar guards blocked her path.
"I'm Heira. Heira Darnell. Call my father."
They didn't move.
"I've just been released from prison," she added. "I have nowhere else to go."
One guard finally nodded, walked off, and made the call.
Minutes passed.
Then the gates opened, slowly and reluctantly, as if they too judged her.
She stepped inside.
The grounds had changed. The fountains were cleaner, the gardens more manicured. There was no sign of chaos, no emptiness. Life had gone on without her. That reality stung more than any slap.
She walked past the servants' quarters, past the training field where she used to practice archery, past the rose hedge where she once hid her diary. The house had been repainted. Everything gleamed, cold and clinical.
At the main entrance, the double doors loomed taller than she remembered. She raised a hand to knock, but they opened before she could.
A housekeeper—an unfamiliar woman with a thin face and colder eyes—stood in the doorway.
"Your father's waiting. Don't dawdle."
No smile. No welcome.
The house swallowed her whole.
Every step echoed. Every portrait stared. Her footsteps traced memories that no longer belonged to her. She stopped outside her father's office. Her fingers curled into a fist, then slowly loosened. She knocked once.
Then she stepped inside and closed the door.
Heira opened her mouth to speak.
CRACK.
A hand met her face with brutal force. The slap turned her vision white for a second, her head snapping sideways. Her father still as tall, still as rigid, still a titan of power stood before her, rage boiling in his bloodshot eyes.
"You dare have the security call me like some errand boy?" he roared. "You've forgotten your place, Heira. Prison was supposed to fix that."
She touched her cheek, now burning, her eyes wide. "Father… I just returned. And you greet me with violence?"
Another voice cut through the tension like a knife.
"Oh please," it said.
A woman stepped out of the corner. Her mother Elegant, cruel, beautiful like porcelain forged with venom.
"You expected a welcome parade? Trumpets? A red carpet?" she sneered. "You embarrassed this family. You vanished into disgrace."
Heira turned toward her, chest heaving. "I served my time. I paid for what happened and I wasn't even the person who commuted the crime yet I'm being treated like the culprit."
Her mother stepped forward.
PAK.
Another slap. Harder. More personal.
The world spun again. Two slaps. No embraces. No warmth.
"That is because to the whole world you are the culprit don't try rewrite an already written fate. You're moving into the servants' quarters," her motherhissed. "Your old room? Taken. Your sisters now. You'd know that if you hadn't been rotting in a cell."
Heira stared at them—her family, once the center of her world. Betrayal thickened the air like poison.
But something else stirred inside her.
Not fear.
Not pain.
Resolve.
She would not beg.
She would not break.
This was not the homecoming she expected.
But it was the war she had been forged to fight.