Chapter 1

“Evelyn, come out! Someone has come to take you home!”

As the long, grating creak of the door reverberated through the corridor, sunlight poured into the gloomy, cramped ward, illuminating every corner. The staff member’s voice dripped with indifference as they gave a dismissive glance toward the woman seated on the bed.

This was a psychiatric hospital, but this woman before them was unlike the others. She was the sole individual here who was mentally sound, yet forcibly confined as a “patient.”

Evelyn sat quietly at the head of the bed, her gaze lowered and vacant, staring off into some indeterminate point in the room. When the words “someone has come to take you away” reached her ears, her eyelids shot open as if her soul, once scattered, had suddenly returned. Her once-lifeless eyes now trembled with an intensity that betrayed her shock!

Someone had finally come for her! After two painful, interminable years, when hope had nearly vanished entirely, someone had finally arrived to free her!

Overcome with emotion, she attempted to stand from the dilapidated wooden bed but, weakened by prolonged inactivity, collapsed to the floor almost immediately after rising. A searing pain spread across her palms and face, her hands throbbing and swelling as though scorched by fire.

Not a single person moved to help her to her feet.

Evelyn didn’t feel wronged. Wiping the dust from her face, she painstakingly pulled herself upright. In these past two years, she had grown accustomed to such treatment.