Chapter 125

••• Victoria’s POV ••• "Urghh..." I woke up to my body feeling pain all over. But there was something else... A pain unlike any other. Not the sharp kind that makes you scream, but the slow, coiling kind that wraps itself around your nerves and sinks in deep. My body felt like it had been dipped in ice water and left to freeze from the inside out. Every inch of me ached—my shoulders, my neck, my spine. My head throbbed, pounding against my skull with each beat of my heart. But worse than the pain was the weight. The weight of knowing something had gone terribly wrong. My eyes fluttered open, and I immediately regretted it. A harsh, flickering light blinked overhead, casting shifting shadows on the cracked stone walls. My vision swam for a moment before sharpening just enough to make sense of where I was. I was underground. A basement. In a cell. It smelled of mildew, dust, and something else—something sour and faintly metallic. Old blood. The air was damp and cold, the kind of cold tha