There is no clock in this place.
No sun. No stars. No horizon.
Time here is not measured in hours—but in the sounds of your own breath echoing off stone, in the whimper of your body recoiling from cold touch, in the prayers you whisper into the black.
Sara did not sleep.
She drifted.
Through fragments of memory. Through the voices of her children calling from far away. Through the warmth of Nick's arms that no longer held her. Through dreams that became cages and cages that swallowed dreams.
They called it "The Garden."
But there was no garden—only stone and rot and iron vines that curled like serpents around her wrists.
They brought her there on the second day—or maybe the fiftieth. It no longer mattered.
A room with walls that bled condensation, ceilings that wept in silence, and a floor that seemed to breathe when no one was watching.
And in that room, she was planted.
Her body exposed to darkness and the cold. Her mind fed poison. Her spirit stripped layer by layer until the roots of her will began to crack.
"We do not hurt you," they told her.
"You hurt yourself by remembering."
And so they tried to teach her how to forget.
They whispered truths and lies until they blurred together like ink on wet paper. They made her hold still in positions that broke the language of her bones. They showed her mirrors—not to see, but to be seen.
One of them—a woman cloaked in violet—would speak to her every day like she was a doll being rewired.
—"You are not pain," she would whisper. "You are purpose."
—"You are not rage. You are rhythm."
—"You are not a person. You are a performance."
Sometimes, they made her write.
With fingers trembling, she was forced to pen phrases that carved scars into her soul.
"I was made to be beautiful."
"I was born to please."
"My silence is sacred."
When she refused, they washed her in water so cold it sliced through skin like frost-needles, leaving her breathless, her teeth clattering like wind-chimes made of bone.
The water was always black.
Like forgetting.
They braided her hair like she was a gift to be wrapped.
They painted her lips with pigment that tasted of rust and dust.
They made her look into her own eyes until she no longer recognized herself.
Sara broke in quiet ways.
Not through screams—but through the soft whimper that escaped her when they whispered Nick's name.
Through the ache that bloomed in her chest when she thought of Anthony's laugh, or Ana's tiny fingers curled around hers.
Her tortures were not always physical.
More often, they made her watch.
They showed her footage—doctored, twisted. Videos of Nick walking away, of her babies in the arms of strangers.
They whispered that she had been forgotten.
That Nick had replaced her.
That Ana now called another woman "mommy."
They pierced her faith with surgical precision. Not to kill it—only to let it bleed slowly.
They called her "petal" as they tore her apart.
—"Such a pretty flower," they would murmur. "But flowers must be trimmed to remain obedient."
Sara stopped speaking.
At first, she tried to speak to the walls. To Nick, in her mind. To God. To herself.
But the echoes began to laugh.
So she chose silence.
Because silence could not be used against her.
She marked the days not in numbers, but in bruises.
Not in time, but in what she had lost.
A thought.
A memory.
A piece of her name.
And yet… something remained.
A stubborn ember inside her chest that refused to extinguish.
Even when they gagged her.
Even when they hung her from iron.
Even when they told her she was only a body.
That ember whispered, Nick is searching for you.
It told her, Anthony still needs your lullaby.
Ana still remembers your heartbeat.
It was faint, that light.
But it was hers.
And in the dark of that garden—
Where beauty was twisted,
Where love was forbidden,
Where they tried to make her perfect—
Sara began to grow thorns.