Aria
I stood in the dimly lit room, the air thick with an oppressive silence. It felt like a cruel twist of fate to be here again, the place I had narrowly escaped from just weeks before. But this time, the shock wasn't from the room—it was from the man before me.
"Dad?" I whispered, my voice barely audible. His face was battered, bruised, and foreign to me. The father I had once looked up to was gone, replaced by someone I could barely recognize.
"What happened to you?" I asked, a mixture of disbelief and pity in my voice.
He didn't answer me directly. Instead, his gaze shifted to Cassian, who stood by the door like a silent sentinel. "Why don't you ask him?" my father said bitterly, his tone sharp enough to cut through steel.
