Chapter 10: Stolen?
Lin Fan sat slumped in the corner of a dim, damp cell.
Cold chains bound his wrists and ankles, shackling him to the jagged stone wall behind him.
The chill from the ground crept up his spine, and the silence of the prison gnawed at his sanity.
His body barely moved—stiff from the cold, sore from the beatings, and heavy with a gnawing emptiness he couldn't name.
Lin Fan's voice cracked through the quiet, barely a whisper.
"Why... why do I feel like something was stolen from me?"
He had asked that same question over and over, for hours now.
His cheeks were streaked with dried tears, his lips chapped, and his eyes bloodshot.
But no matter how many times he whispered it, no answer ever came.
'You need to calm down, boy.'
The voice echoed through his mind, old and firm.