Z land

Previously

…The journal, its pages worn smooth by Elara’s touch and now by mine, lay open in my hands. The final entry, scrawled in a hand that was both urgent and resigned, was burned into my mind: “The Veil thins where the heart remembers. But remember, a choice made here binds you forever. To leave is to forget. To stay is to become.” Leave. The word had been my sole obsession for weeks, a beacon in the suffocating darkness. Escape. Forget the nightmares, the gnawing hunger, the terror of Silas’s eyes. Forget the chilling silence of Elara’s final