Chapter Ten

~Mel~

Darkness.

It was the only thing I could feel. Heavy, suffocating, endless darkness, like I was sinking into it, with no end in sight. Was this death because it didn’t hurt anymore.

But the voices… they were there. Muffled, distant, but familiar. Hannah’s scream echoed faintly, fading as if she was being pulled away from me.

Suddenly, I was falling—not in the real world, but in my mind, spiraling through memories I couldn't control. A flash of laughter, a warm touch, and then pain, sharp and burning, tearing through me.

“Wake up,” a voice whispered, low and gentle. It wasn’t Hannah this time. It was someone else—someone I knew but couldn’t place.

Everything felt too slow, like I was trapped in a dream I couldn’t wake from, but something was pushing me to the surface, pulling me out of the void.

“Wake up.”

The voice was sharper this time, more recognizable, and I snapped my eyes open with a gasp. My chest heaved as I struggled to make sense of my surroundings. The first thing