The room was silent.
It should have been the peaceful kind of silence but no, it was suffocating. The kind that settled in the air like dust and pressed down on everything like an invisible weight.
Aramith stood before the mirror, barely recognizing the figure that stared back at him.
His breath caught in his throat.
His reflection was... hideous.
The eyes that stared back at him were deep, soulless, and with heavy darkened bags underneath. A stranger, gaunt and sickly, mirrored his every movement. Sunken cheeks, skin stretched too thin over sharp bones, dark hollows under his purple eyes. His already pale complexion was nearly corpse-like now, an eerie shade that made him look closer to the dead than the living.
How long had it been?
His once well-fitted clothes hung off his frame like they belonged to someone else—someone bigger, healthier. His fingers trembled as they brushed over his collarbone, now jutting out prominently, before trailing up to his face.
