The boy's hands trembled as he buried them in his face, the crushing weight of despair settling over him like a suffocating shroud.
"Lie… It was all a lie… I never even left this damn room," he whispered, his voice fracturing under the strain of shattered hope.
The illusion of escape had been so vivid, so tantalizingly real, that the truth now stabbed at him like a jagged blade.
"This must all be an illusion," he mumbled, his fingers clawing desperately at his face as if he could rip away the false reality.
But the cold, damp walls of the underground cell remained—unyielding, merciless, and all too real.
Suddenly, a searing pain tore through his lower back, and with a guttural scream, five tentacles erupted from his spine.
They were long, sturdy, and cloaked in a writhing darkness that seemed to pulse with his anguish.
The tentacles lashed out blindly—one cracked the wall, another punctured the ceiling with a crunch.
Then they twisted together, merging into a monstrous limb that gouged the floor with a deafening crash.
Above, the ceiling groaned ominously, chunks of debris raining down as if the entire structure teetered on the brink of collapse.
But the boy didn't care—he couldn't. His mind was unravelling, torn apart by the endless torment of captivity and the fresh agony of yet another illusion.
He had been trapped here too long, tortured too long. Just when freedom had seemed within reach, the scene had dissolved, revealing itself as nothing more than a cruel deception.
Clinging to the last threads of his sanity, he collapsed to the floor, his body wracked with sobs.
Through tear-blurred eyes, he glimpsed them beyond the cell doors—the three girls, their laughter sharp and mocking, cutting through the air like shards of glass.
Their gazes pierced his fragile mind, each stare a dagger twisting deeper into his wounds.
Why? Why are you looking at me like that? Why are you all looking at me like that? he screamed inwardly, their cruel amusement shattering what little resolve he had left.
His face crumpled, the final traces of hope draining away, leaving only a hollow despair in its wake.
The forest, the escape—it had all been a lie.
As the girls' voices faded into the shadows, he buried his face deeper into his now blood soaked hands, the faint clink of shackles echoing in the dark.