The freezing night wind was a physical, roaring force that tore at Aria's clothes and whipped her tangled hair violently around her face. Gravity seized her, dragging her downward into the pitch-black void of the river valley.
But inside her mind, it was terrifyingly quiet.
Aria didn't scream again. She didn't thrash. Bound and blindfolded, suspended in the empty air between life and death, a surreal, haunting calmness descended over her.
She compared this feeling to dying in the asylum. That death had been a slow, agonizing fade in a sterile white room. It had been a relief. But this? This felt like a tragedy. Because this time, her heart was full. This time, she actually had something to lose.
