The Prisoner of Truth

“We’re losing her! Get the crash cart, *now*!”

It was midnight in Ashford City, but the harsh fluorescent lights of the ER burned with the intensity of noon. Torn flesh. A face drained of blood. A pulse so faint it was nearly imperceptible. Blood pumped relentlessly onto the white sheets, staining them a sickening crimson—

The room boiled with a frantic, suffocating urgency.

Bag after bag of saline was hung; the defibrillator paddles were charged and discharged time after time. A man stood trembling by the gurney, his eyes wide and unblinking as nurses and doctors shoved past him with syringes and medical tools he couldn’t even begin to name.

After what felt like an eternity, he finally gathered the courage to look down at the patient.

Just a single glance was enough to make his heart spasm in violent agony. For a second, his mind outright refused to process the sight.

The woman dying on the bed was his wife.

Mangled. Barely breathing.

He knew she was slipping away. He had known it the moment they wheeled her through the doors. Yet, when the final declaration of death fell from the doctor’s lips, an overwhelming wave of grief still swallowed him whole.

“Time of death… I’m so sorry, sir. We did everything we could.”

The man only caught those few words. The rest of the noise in the room seemed to stretch and distort, muffled by the ringing in his ears. All that was left was the piercing, endless shriek of the heart monitor.

The green line stretched out.

Flat. Completely flat.

That straight line slithered out of the machine like a venomous snake, coiling tightly around his chest, squeezing the air from his lungs. Through the deafening buzz in his head, he slowly turned around.

He looked at the little girl standing behind him.

She was so small. So frail. A thin dress hung off her fragile frame. She stood utterly alone in the trauma bay, the harsh clinical light washing out her tear-stained face to a porcelain white. She had her mother’s eyes. There was no mistaking they were mother and daughter.

But the moment his gaze landed on her, the man’s expression twisted into something monstrous.

His pupils constricted to pinpricks. A toxic mixture of grief, rage, and pure hatred erupted in his eyes, burning them a terrifying, bloodshot red.

It was a look of absolute violence. Of profound loathing.

It was not the way a father should ever look at his child. He was staring at a demon—a creature that had stolen his wife’s life.

“Dad…” the girl whimpered.

She took a hesitant half-step toward him, like a frightened sparrow seeking shelter from a storm.

Instead of opening his arms, the man lunged. His massive hand clamped around her throat.

For such a young, delicate neck, the force was catastrophic. Her windpipe was crushed instantly; her lungs screamed for air, but nothing came. The panic of imminent death crashed over her, and she kicked her legs frantically, her small hands clawing at his wrist.

She could feel it—his absolute, unadulterated intent to kill.

The medical staff erupted into chaos. People were shouting, hands were grabbing at the man’s shoulders and arms, trying to pull him away. But the girl couldn’t hear any of it.

Severe hypoxia was blurring her vision, darkening the edges of the room. All she could see was her father’s face. Contorted with grief, bloodshot eyes bulging with a murderous frenzy—he looked as though he wanted to tear the flesh from her bones.

“It’s you! All because of you!” he roared, his fingers digging deeper into her neck.

A sickening *crack* came from her fragile cervical vertebrae. He glared at her with wild, tear-streaked eyes.

“*Selene Morozov!* You killed your mother!”

“Professor Morozov? Professor?”

Selene Morozov was pulled from the depths of her memory by a hesitant voice inside the Ashford University lecture hall. Her eyelashes fluttered. The moment she opened her eyes, the nightmare from twenty-two years ago dissolved like smoke, retreating back into the recesses of her mind.

Only her neck still throbbed, phantom pain lingering beneath her skin like an old ghost. Unshakable. Indelible.

“Professor, you’re finally awake. I had a few questions about the criminal psychology module I wanted to ask you.” The student who had woken her leaned in, casting her cautious, sidelong glances.

Outside the window, bare branches scraped against the glass. A chill breeze slipped through a crack in the frame, lifting the dark hair framing Selene’s face and revealing her profile. The student found himself momentarily captivated.

Selene had striking, almond-shaped eyes. Under any other circumstances, eyes like that—so beautifully shaped—could have made a man lose his mind. But even under the harsh glare of the lecture hall lights, her gaze remained entirely devoid of life.

Gloomy. Freezing.

It was an apathy so deep it seemed almost mineral, like staring into the eyes of a cold-blooded reptile. The longer the student looked, the more he believed the rumors circulating on campus. Their criminal psychology professor might have the face of a model, but her personality was undeniably eccentric and unnerving.

“If there’s something you don’t understand, just ask,” Selene said suddenly, her low voice snapping him out of his daze. “This is the last session before finals. If you don’t ask now, it’ll be too late.”

The student lowered his head and forced a smile. “Right.”

But Selene had already dissected him. The corners of his mouth were turned up, but his eyelids drooped, and his brows were drawn tight—a textbook micro-expression of sorrow.

She slowly closed her textbook. “Something on your mind?”

The student’s head snapped up, a flash of genuine shock crossing his features. For a split second, he almost thought she could read minds.

It took him a long while to find his voice. “Professor Morozov… have you heard the rumors about you on campus?”

Selene’s gaze cooled a fraction. “I have.”

It was an understatement. The things posted on the university forums were vicious. Yet, her tone was so flat, so stripped of emotion, that it sounded as if she were discussing the weather. No anger. No sadness.

As if she weren’t the victim at all.

Seeing her utter indifference, the student felt a surge of unjustified anger on her behalf. “Professor! They’re saying these terrible things about you. Does it really not bother you at all?”

He took a sudden step forward.

“Or is it true? Are you really as gloomy, cold, and creepy as they say? Are you some kind of sociopath?!”

The sharp, blunt words hung in the air.

They hit Selene like physical blows, piercing straight through her spine. Barely concealed malice flooded the space between them, dull knives scraping against her ribs. Selene’s hands paused. Her fingertips curled inward, her nails digging sharply into her palms.

Did she not care?

How could she not care?

The wind outside grew louder, dead leaves whipping violently against the windowpane. For the first time, Selene didn’t say a word.

An unbearable, suffocating silence soaked into the classroom.

Finally, the student realized he had crossed a line. A terrible thought hit him: perhaps Selene *had* tried to defend herself in the past, but had simply given up. Because she was an anomaly. A square peg in a round hole. And in a society obsessed with networking and fake pleasantries, refusing to conform was a sin punishable by social execution.

“I… I’m sorry,” he mumbled, still in a daze.

But before he could take it back, Selene had already grabbed her bag and shoved the heavy wooden door open. A blast of freezing wind howled into the room, biting at their skin.

Selene stood alone in the doorway, her picturesque features set in stone, radiating an arctic chill. A woman that proud would never accept someone’s pity.

“Class is over. Curfew is in ten minutes, so head back to your dorm. I’ll answer your questions over email,” she said, glancing at her wristwatch. Her voice was as distant as ever.

“And don’t feel sorry for me. I’m not worth it.”

The ghost of a smile touched her lips—humorless and cold. She pulled on her heavy slate-gray wool coat, wrapping it around herself like a suit of armor, locking the world out.

Without another word, she stepped out into the heavy, waiting darkness.

Because Ashford University was situated on the outskirts of the city, its nights were always suffocatingly dark.

The sprawling campus was desolate. The pitch-black void swallowed everything whole. Selene walked along the cobblestone path, the only light coming from a few flickering streetlamps that cast long, distorted shadows.

She knew she shouldn’t have stopped.

But as she passed the old Blackwood Hall—the former arts building—a foul, unnatural odor suddenly invaded her nostrils.

It was pungent and jarring. At first, Selene could only identify the sharp, chemical bite of turpentine, the solvent used for oil paints. But a second later, she caught it: a cloying, metallic sweetness buried beneath the chemicals.

Copper.

The unmistakable scent of fresh blood.

Selene’s heart skipped a beat, her brows knitting together. Blackwood Hall had been condemned and boarded up for years due to structural safety codes. There shouldn’t be anyone inside. Absolutely no reason for there to be blood.

She followed the scent to a storage room door at the end of the corridor. She reached out and pushed.

*Screeeech—*

The moment the door opened, the stench of rot hit her like a wall. A flock of startled pigeons scattered into the rafters. The pent-up darkness rushed out to meet her, forcing the ancient, termite-eaten wood to groan in protest.

The storage room was dead silent.

A silence that made the hair on the back of her neck stand up.

For a moment, Selene thought she heard a faint rustling on the floor, like a thousand insects scuttling across concrete. But it was the dead of winter. The bugs were dormant. The snakes were hibernating.

What was making that sound?

Acting on pure instinct, she pulled out her phone and flicked on the flashlight.

The narrow beam cut through the gloom, revealing… nothing out of the ordinary. Jars of spoiled paint, overturned easels, dust-covered shelving units.

No blood. No body. Just a few flakes of peeling wallpaper hanging dangerously from the ceiling.

Selene exhaled slowly, the tension leaving her shoulders. *Just a false alarm,* she thought. She turned to leave, but the toe of her boot caught on something heavy on the floor.

*Thud.*

A high-end wooden art case fell on its side, its brass latches popping open from the impact.

As the lid fell open, the brilliant crimson spilling out of it slashed across Selene’s vision like a knife. She pressed her lips together, her body freezing as she slowly looked down.

Her pupils dilated in sheer horror.

Inside the expensive carrying case lay a severed human hand.

The skin was a sickly, pale white, and the jagged stump was oozing dark blood. Yet, the killer had gone to grotesque lengths to preserve it. It was wrapped carefully in a velvet-lined canvas pouch, and the skin had been meticulously coated in a thick layer of beeswax. Under the glare of her flashlight, the wax gave the limb a slick, glossy sheen.

It didn’t look like a piece of human remains.

It looked like a fragile, priceless masterpiece. Beautifully grotesque.

Selene stood paralyzed, staring at the hand.

And then, right before her eyes, the severed fingers twitched.

“Wait… you’re telling me the severed hand *moved*?”

Rookie officer Shane York blinked, his sun-tanned face scrunching up in sheer disbelief. With his sandy hair and bewildered expression, he looked less like a cop and more like a confused golden retriever. “The storage room was pitch black, Selene. Are you sure you didn’t just imagine it?”

Selene Morozov offered nothing but a slow, tired shake of her head.

“Alright, look,” Shane sighed, caught between protocol and skepticism. He scribbled on the back of a receipt. “I’m Shane. If you remember anything else—”

His voice died in his throat.

A sudden gale swept across the quad. Before Shane could hand over the scrap of paper, the wind snatched it, spiraling it high into the night sky like a lost bird.

Selene slowly raised her eyes.

Without her noticing, a matte-black SUV had rolled up to the perimeter. Its tires crunched over the gravel, coming to a sudden, aggressive halt just outside the yellow