June – POV
The darkness was thicker than sleep.
It bled through my dreams like oil—suffocating, heavy, toxic.
I was back there again. In the dark.
The voices whispered — no, screamed — calling me a monster, showing me blood, the glint of silver, the fork buried in his neck. My adopted father's eyes wide with disbelief. My hands shaking, red-stained.
Monster…
The word slithered through my mind, voiced by the ones that had lived in my head for years. No… decades? Or had it only been moments? Time bent strangely when they whispered.
You stabbed him, one hissed. Right in the neck. With a fork.
Another cackled. Such a good little freak. Just like they made you.
Images flashed like lightning behind my eyes. Blood splattering across porcelain floors. My own hands trembling, still gripping cold metal. His gurgles. His pleas.
Then nothing.
Dark again.
Until the whisper turned sharper—You'll never be clean, Number Twelve.
Never be loved.
