Chapter 190: Cause, Meet Effect
The lock turned with the same lazy click as before. A metallic slide, a sigh from rusty hinges. Then the light—harsh and gray—cut through the darkness like a blade.
The man entered, his silhouette recognizable by the way he closed the door: without haste, without fear. As if he were stepping into his own sanctuary, and the prisoner was nothing more than a gutted piece of furniture to be observed between appointments.
But Dylan didn’t move.
Not a twitch. Not a clench of the jaw, not the faintest pulse visible under his skin. He remained exactly as they’d left him: suspended, filthy, sweating, head bowed, arms drawn taut by the chains biting into his wrists.
Limp. But not dead.
Simply because he was still breathing.
Barely—a breath folded in on itself. A faint whisper of air, barely audible, contained within a motionless ribcage.
The torturer stepped forward. The sound of his footsteps echoed, amplified by the damp walls. He stopped a meter away, watching, frowning.
Something had changed.
The body was the same. But the stench of organic exhaustion was gone, the cursed soot no longer seeped from beneath the collarbone. The stigma now slept. Not extinguished—just... cooled. Purified by some miracle or by sheer desperation.
The man crouched slowly, at chest height.
His eyes scanned Dylan’s veins, his bones, his skin. He was looking for a crack, a signal, proof that the suspended creature was more than an empty shell.