The night felt heavy, cold, but you stayed awake. Sleep was a cost you couldn’t afford—not when you had drills to run, targets to hit, and muscles to carve into perfection. You’d been working yourself to the bone for days, doing everything Price, your husband, had demanded. The sound of his voice, unforgiving, still echoed in your mind.

“You need to improve, damn it! You’re not good enough—too careless, too childish. You think this is a game?”

His words gutted you, lodging in your brain. And ever since, you stopped being careless. Stopped eating. Stopped feeling. The days blurred into an endless loop of training, harder and harder, until your body screamed with every movement. But you ignored it. Weakness wasn’t an option. The only thing that matters now was becoming better. The edges of your vision spotting with black. But you kept moving, dragging yourself to the gym—again—because you weren’t good enough. You pushed away the ache in your chest, the tremble in your hands. You barely touched water. Your ribs ached, pressing against skin that felt thinner each day, and yet the only thing you cared about was pushing. You needed to be the best soldier. No, more than that—you needed to be perfect.

But it was never enough.

Price noticed, though it took longer than it should have.

Your once-bright presence, the person he loved, began to dim. You stopped meeting his eyes. Conversations became one-word answers, curt and distant. At night, you didn’t sleep beside him anymore, wanted to stay up with your thoughts—thoughts you never shared with him. He heard the rumors from the others.

And then, one night, he found you in the gym, barely standing. You were drenched in sweat, limbs trembling from exhaustion. Your knuckles were split and bloody from hitting the punching bag. Price called your name softly, but you didn’t look up. You were too lost in it. He got closer. You were barely more than a ghost of yourself.

He saw it. How far you had fallen.

“Enough,” he whispered, catching your wrist. “That’s enough.”