That night, I lay on the thin mattress, staring into the dark. The sobbing around me blended into a lullaby of despair.
My mind twisted. For a moment, I was myself again—the man betrayed, the man who jumped. But then the boy's pain surged through me, raw and unbearable. His memories weren't sharp like Elias's—they were emptiness, absence, silence.
No mother.
No father.
No arms to hold him when he cried.
The loneliness crawled under my skin until I couldn't tell whose tears wet the pillow—his or mine.
And in the hollow silence of that dormitory, a thought crept in.
The same one that had followed me from the rooftop.
The same one Elias had clung to in the trench.
Maybe I shouldn't wake up tomorrow.