Prologue
The house was quiet. Too quiet for a place that had once echoed with laughter, with promises, with the soft hum of love. Now it breathed only shadows.
Maya's hands trembled as she wiped the blood from her skin. Not from fear—no, fear had left her long ago—but from something deeper, a fracture inside her that had finally broken open.
Her husband lay still on the floor, his eyes glassy, his lips parted as if words had died before reaching them. In that silence, Maya felt an unfamiliar calm, as though the chaos in her mind had been silenced with him.