The heavy clang of distant metal echoed down the narrow hallway, swallowed quickly by the suffocating darkness. A lone guard moved slowly, footsteps deliberate and cautious. The flickering fluorescent lights barely cut through the shadows, casting jagged shapes on the cracked concrete walls.
His breath came steady but shallow, eyes darting to every barred cell — some empty, some holding silent prisoners with hollow eyes. The air was thick with forgotten secrets and a chill that seemed to seep into his bones.
He gripped his flashlight tightly, knowing this prison held more than just inmates — something unseen, watching, waiting.
The hallway narrowed the deeper the guard walked, the ceiling lower, the air heavier. At the very end, half-swallowed by shadows, was a small iron door —
the bartolina.
At the end of the hall was the bartolina — a small, cruel cell used to punish prisoners with total isolation
No lock. No light. Just cold steel and the weight of something watching.
He paused outside.
Then, with a scoff that tried too hard to sound confident, he spoke.
> "Enjoy your last night, freak."
His voice echoed off the stone walls, but the silence that followed felt louder.
From the darkness inside, something shifted.
A figure moved forward, just enough for the light to catch a pair of eyes — wild, sharp, and gleaming with pure bloodlust. The man's long, greasy hair hung in tangled ropes over his face. He wore a stained, threadbare orange prison uniform. Filthy. Damp. Like he'd been rotting here for years.
He didn't speak.
He just stared.
The guard stiffened, jaw tightening. He raised his flashlight slightly, but not enough to reveal the full face — maybe he didn't want to see it. Maybe he already had, once, and never forgot.
Still, he turned away first.
> "Tomorrow," he muttered. "Then it's over."
But even as he walked back down the hallway, trying to steady his breath, he could feel the prisoner's eyes boring into his back — and he knew that what waited behind that door wasn't human anymore.
A sudden, ragged laugh tore through the stillness — raw, wild, and unhinged. The prisoner's voice bounced off the cold walls like a twisted melody of madness. It echoed longer than it should have, as if the darkness itself was laughing with him.
The guard didn't dare look back. His footsteps quickened, but his breath hitched with every step. He kept walking, eyes fixed ahead, though the weight of those hollow, bloodshot eyes burned into his back.
There was something in that laugh… something not just deadly, but deeply broken. The prisoner's eyes, wild with bloodlust moments before, now shimmered with a strange sadness. A storm trapped behind bars, raging and weeping all at once.
The guard's bravado crumbled with every echo of that haunting laugh, but still he kept moving — away from the bartolina, away from whatever nightmares lurked within.