flicker!! flicker!!
The ceiling lightstones flickered unevenly, casting broken and unstable shadows across Lia's pale face as the faint hum of some artifacts echoed inside a sealed laboratory room.
Slowly, painfully, her eyes opened in thin slits, and the first thing she felt was the cold bite of metal restraints digging into her wrists and ankles as she instinctively tried to move.
Even though she wanted to sit up, her body refused to respond, and only then did she realise that she was tightly strapped to the bed beneath her, unable to move even an inch.
There was no colour left on her face anymore, and her cheeks were sunken deeply into her skull, making the sharp outline of her bones visible beneath her stretched skin.
Her body looked fragile, almost dead, as if she had been starved for weeks, and every shallow breath she took seemed to cost her more strength than she could afford.
