Page 210 of Somno Slave

“You started losing time,” Peter’s voice drops low now. “You stopped sleeping. You started referring to places none of us recognised. Cells, Friars,” His eyes flick briefly toward my wrist again.

Pain answers immediately. A heavy, throbbing ache buried inside the joint itself, like the bone remembers being damaged even if my mind doesn’t. My stomach tightens violently around it.

I stop breathing.

Peter notices. His expression shifts for half a second before flattening again. “You kept insisting your arm had been broken before we ever restrained you.”

The fluorescent lights buzz overhead. My pulse starts climbing harder beneath my skin.

“No,” I whisper again, but it sounds thinner now.

Peter exhales slowly through his nose. “Then the fourth body was found.”

The room seems to contract around the sentence.

My mouth dries instantly.

“A therapist,” he says carefully. “That’s when we realised this wasn’t deteriorating.” His voice lowers further. “You were escalating.”

My heart slams violently against my ribs.

“No.”

“Rheda—”

“No!” The scream tears out of me hard enough to leave my throat burning. The restraints rattle violently as I jerk against them. “That was him! That was all him!”

My voice breaks apart completely after that. I can hear my own breathing echoing wetly around the interrogation room and humiliation crashes through me because I sound insane.

I sound exactly like the people we used to restrain in here.

My chest spasms around another breath.

“You saw him,” I choke out desperately. “You talked to him. Peter, please.”

Begging now.

God.

I’m begging.

“He’s real!” I choke. “He’s fucking real.”

There’s another flash across my mind.

A knife.

Something thick, crude. Dragging through flesh while someone screams. My vision blacks at the edges. I wrench against the chair so hard pain explodes through my wrists.

“Stop,” I gasp.

Because suddenly I can smell blood. Old blood. Thick and copper-heavy. Mixed with damp stone and burning herbs and human skin left too long near heat.

The room flickers.

“There has never been a patient called Deogal Attor admitted to this unit.” He spits the words slowly and every syllable cuts deeper.

“That’s not true.” The words tear out of me before I can hold them back. Tears spill hot and immediate down my face. “That’s not true. I saw him.”