The flickering neon light buzzed above them, casting broken flashes of yellow across the shattered room.
Silence stretched like a wire about to snap.
Adrian stared at Clara, jaw locked, the gun trembling in his hands.
Luca stood behind the killer, frozen in place.
No one dared to breathe.
Clara didn't move. The knife gleamed inches from her heart.
The killer held her wrists in an iron grip, his body rigid, eyes wild yet lucid, as if he was aware of the madness that ruled him.
"Look at her, doctor," he hissed, his lips twisting into a grin. "She's not yours anymore."
Adrian stepped forward, but Clara's eyes pleaded no.
One wrong move, and the blade would find her chest.
Inside, Clara's fear was a sharp, steady pulse but beneath it, under the metallic scent of blood and dust, something else burned.
A connection.
The one tether that had never broken. Adrian.
It won't end like this.
She took a deep breath, closed her eyes, and pictured his face, his mouth, his eyes, the way his name sounded inside her mind.
She focused on that image… and let the power flow.
Then she entered the killer's mind.
It was chaos.
A hurricane of screams and shadows.
A decaying house. A woman drinking at a table, a man shouting, a child hiding behind a door.
The father's belt, the sound of crying that no one ever heard.
Pain split through the killer's skull.
He screamed, clutching his head. The grip on her wrists faltered, just for a second.
Clara dropped to the floor, gasping, and crawled toward Adrian.
Her knees scraped the concrete, blood pooling under her palms.
"Clara!" Luca shouted, but the noise was drowned by the killer's roar.
Adrian reached out to her and in that suspended heartbeat, their fingers touched.
The impact wasn't just physical.
It was blinding.
A burst of light exploded outward, swallowing the room, the air, the noise itself.
The floor shuddered. The walls cracked.
Luca pulled the trigger but the bullet froze midair, then dropped harmlessly to the ground.
The light devoured everything.
When Clara opened her eyes, she wasn't in the room anymore.
A corridor stretched before her, walls of rotten wood, a broken clock ticking backward.
Adrian stood beside her, pale, stunned.
"Where are we?" he whispered.
She already knew.
"In his mind."
They walked in silence through the trembling hallway, whispers curling through the air.
Every step creaked like the floor itself was alive.
Then a door slammed open.
A boy stood before them, small, bruised, clutching a broken toy in his hand.
His eyes were wide, hollow.
Adrian knelt.
"We won't hurt you," he said softly. "None of this was your fault."
The boy looked at him, then past him and the shadow appeared. A tall man with a belt.
Screams filled the air again, an echo looping endlessly.
Clara pressed her hands to her ears, but it was useless.
The child's pain cut through her like glass.
In the real world, the killer convulsed, his body writhing on the floor.
Adrian reached for Clara's hand. She took it.
Together, they focused and the shadow began to dissolve, fading like smoke.
Clara knelt before the boy.
"I forgive you," she whispered.
Light shattered around them. The boy smiled once… and vanished.
Reality snapped back. The neon light flickered on.
The killer lay trembling on the ground.
Adrian and Clara clung to each other, breathing as if they had run for miles.
The killer lifted his head slowly. His face was different, no longer blank, no longer monstrous.
There was terror there. Awareness.
"I can feel everything now…" he whispered.
His voice was fractured, unfamiliar even to himself. He looked around, disoriented, then stared at his own hands.
"What… what have I done?"
The question came out like a cry. Then the sobs tore through him, violent and raw, breaking whatever was left inside.
He doubled over, shaking uncontrollably.
"Kill me," he begged. "Please… I can't live with this. I can't… "
His fingers clawed at the floor.
Clara's eyes filled with tears. She moved closer, despite herself, and knelt beside him.
"This is the price of consciousness," she whispered. "And also… of salvation."
He stared at her, bewildered, before collapsing sideways, weeping like a child.
Luca stood still, unable to speak.
The gun slipped from his hand and clattered to the floor.
"What… what did you do?" he asked, voice trembling.
Adrian looked up at him: pale, exhausted, but steady.
"We silenced the darkness," he said. "That's all."
No one spoke. The only sound was the killer's ragged breathing.
Outside, the wind moaned softly through the trees, like the world itself was exhaling.
Clara's strength gave out; she fell against Adrian's chest. He held her tightly, his hands still trembling as they found her hair.
Luca bent over the killer, checking his pulse. He was alive but hollow, emptied of whatever force had driven him. An empty vessel filled with unbearable truth.
Adrian met Clara's gaze again.
Her lips trembled. "Is it over?"
"I don't know," he said. "But we're still here."
The neon stopped flickering. The light steadied, soft and pale, like dawn creeping through the wreckage. And for the first time, none of them felt afraid.