October 11th, 2025
2:39 AM

I was without my swords on that fateful day. Unarmed, trusting, blind to the darkness within those woods.

I’ll never let that happen again.

Ember says there’s a heaviness about me now. He says I haven’t looked the same since the incident. I know what he means. When I look in the mirror, a stranger looks back at me, dark-eyed and wary.

He hasn't been the same, either. He keeps on smiling as always, but I can see the guilt in his eyes. He blames himself for this. He doesn't say it - Ember never says what's bothering him - but I can feel it.

I wonder if anyone wonders where I went. I stand at the head of the track. I do not cheer or smile or laugh. I am not a leader. There is nothing to sing for.

My body may be free, but my soul is stuck in Legion territory, caught on the barbed wire fences outside the prison. The girl I was six months ago is dead. She bled out on the floor of that concrete cell.

I've spent many a sleepless night talking to Ember. He says five days is a long time to be tortured and abused and held in a concrete cell, and that he can never imagine how it all must feel for me. A good warrior would have been able to handle it. A good warrior would have escaped on the first day and not let this all happen. A good warrior wouldn't have paraded off into the jungle unarmed. Sun's light, Sauda, you're a fucking idiot.

Oh god, I remember their hands. Every night in my sleep, I feel their hands all over me. Choking me, smothering me, stripping away all the dignity and pride I once held dear. Every night, I drown in their touch.

They reached inside me. They took all that they wanted. They pulled out my soul while they were using me.

They used me. They used me.

They used me.

What kind of a warrior am I now?

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