Chapter6 SHADOWS OF A BROKEN SOUL

Danielle’s POV The darkness wasn’t just around me — it was inside me, suffocating every last flicker of light or hope I might once have carried. I stood motionless in that cursed room, a hollow shell swallowed by shadows darker than any night. The very walls seemed to bleed the echoes of my screams — those raw, desperate howls of agony I had released night after night, drowning in my own torment. Beneath me, blood-soaked drapes clung to my ankles like chains. My battered body had been an unwilling canvas, painted with bruises and scars — a story no one wanted to read but everyone had authored. That bare mattress, rough and unwelcoming, had swallowed my tears, my sweat, my blood — the invisible testament to every moment I had been broken. And above, the cracked ceiling — an unchanging witness I had stared at more times than any masterpiece, yearning for an escape that never came. Every day, I wished I had never been born. Though my body was a rare miracle — born with both a womb to nurt