Chapter 205

GIDEON

The spray of the shower felt like a brutal scrubbing—not of dirt, but of some clinging, invisible filth. I stood under the blistering water, my forehead pressed against the cool, tiled wall, letting the heat punish my skin. It didn’t help. The exhaustion ran bone-deep, a kind of rot the water couldn’t rinse away.

What happened?

The question was a relentless hammer in my skull, and eve