chapter Seventy four

The weight of the dungeon walls pressed down on Jessica, a physical incarnation of the crushing despair that had settled in her soul. The air was thick with the reek of damp gravestone and decay, a constant reminder of their imprisonment. Each day bled into the coming, a constant cycle of privation and fear.

The days were harsh, enduring, and endlessly long. The dungeon, a stark, cold cell sculpted into the bedrock of Alpha Landon's dungeons, held little more than bare and damp gravestone walls, a single, gravel water pail, and a straw- filled pallet for each of them to rest on. The only splinter of light that pierced through the dusk came from a small, barred window high up on the wall, slightly offering a regard of the world they had lost.

Their only food came in the form of a single, stingy mess delivered once a day. Each day, a rough, untidy guard, his face hardened by times of violence and Jos stay in the dungeons. He would push a bowl of watery broth and a thin stale bread thr