A knife—short, sharp, unmistakably real.
He pressed it against my chest, not hard enough to kill me, just enough to make the threat undeniable.
A line of pain followed as the blade dragged downward, shallow but deliberate. Warmth spread where it passed.
I screamed.
“You know what they’ll do to me?” he hissed. “For letting them go?”
His hand struck my face, snapping my head sideways. Stars burst behind my eyes. Blood flooded my mouth.
“If I’m going to die,” he went on, voice low and shaking with fury, “I’ll make sure you pay first.”
I spat the blood straight into his eyes.
For a heartbeat, time froze.
He wiped his face slowly, methodically, like a man savoring what came next. The knife lowered again, hovering just above my skin.
“You’ll bleed slow,” he promised.
No.
Something inside me hardened—not fear, not pain, but resolve.
I would not die like this.
Not begging.
Not screaming.
Not broken.
A deafening crack split the night.
For a fraction of a second, nothing made sense.
His body jerked violently, muscles locking as if some invisible hand had seized his spine. The knife slipped from his fingers, clattering uselessly against stone. His eyes bulged, shock blowing them wide, whites stark around the dark pupils. Confusion flickered there—brief, almost childlike.
Then blood bubbled from his mouth.
At first it was just a thin, wet trickle sliding down his chin. Then his lips parted, and a thick, choking gush poured out, splattering across my face, my chest, the torn fabric clinging to me. It was hot. Metallic. Alive.
He convulsed once.
Twice.
A wet, broken sound tore from his throat—and then his weight collapsed sideways, crushing into the stone with a dull finality.
I screamed and shoved with everything I had left.
His body rolled off me, heavy and wrong, landing in an awkward heap that didn’t move again.
I scrambled backward on my elbows and heels, lungs dragging in air like I’d been drowned and dragged back to shore. My chest burned—no, seared—like someone had poured fire straight into the open wound.
The slash throbbed with every heartbeat. Deep. Pulsing.
Blood soaked the front of my body, slick and warm, running in steady rivulets down my stomach, dripping onto the pale stone beneath me in fat, obscene drops.