Hunter was sitting on the cold floor of the basement room Camilla had made for him—a small, dim space that felt more like a cage than a refuge. He didn’t want to be here. Not really. Every fiber of his being screamed to run back to his uncle’s house, even if that meant more pain. Because pain, at least, was familiar. Pain was something he could understand. But here? Here was silence that screamed, and shadows that whispered.

Outside, Luz and a few friends were laughing, their voices loud and careless. Hunter hated it. The noise was like sharp nails scraping his skull, relentless and intrusive. And Camilla’s friends? They were worse. The toddler's endless babbling grated on his nerves, and the adults—he couldn’t even tell their gender or intentions, just strange figures blurring the edges of his fragile world. Hunter’s eyes stared blankly at the cracked wall across from him, but his mind was somewhere far away—lost in memories he wished he could forget. The basement smelled faintly of damp earth and old incense, a scent that dragged him back to darker times. Times when his uncle’s hands were never gentle, when prayers were twisted into chains, and “salvation” felt like a cage built from fear and pain. He didn’t belong here, but he didn’t belong anywhere anymore. The walls were closing in, the silence pressing down on his chest like a weight too heavy to lift. He felt invisible, unheard, a ghost trapped between worlds. The laughter outside was a cruel reminder of the life he wasn’t allowed to have—the childhood stolen, the innocence shattered.

With a barely audible whisper, barely more than a breath, Hunter murmured to himself, “I don’t want this. I don’t want any of this.” His voice cracked under the weight of unshed tears and unspeakable memories. “Just leave me alone. Forget I’m here.” But even as he said it, he knew the ghosts of his past would never let him go. Not yet. Not ever.