The vision didn't just appear; it invaded me. It wasn't a movie playing out on a screen; it was a memory that wasn't my own, bleeding into my mind. One moment I was in my bed, the next I was on the unforgiving ground, the scent of sweat and despair thick in the air. The sun beat down with a vengeance I could feel on my skin.
A man was there, his knees pressed into the dirt. Iron cuffs bit into his wrists, and his back was a landscape of old scars. The overseers' voices were harsh, brutal barks, and the crack of the whip above him was a promise of pain. He was a slave, and I was seeing his life as if it were my own.
The weight of his chains wasn't just a visual; I felt it on my soul. But it was the quiet hopelessness in his eyes that truly broke me. It was a bottomless abyss, a kind of emptiness that made me sick to my stomach. I heard the same whisper I had heard before—the one that had haunted Elias, the one that had tormented the boy. It was a siren's call to oblivion, a tempting offer to end the torment.
A cold certainty settled in my gut, a prophecy more terrifying than any dream. I knew with every fiber of my being that this was the next life I was meant to save. A new kind of dread washed over me—a chilling premonition that I couldn't ignore.
His noose was already waiting.