Pain was an abstract concept until now.
I'd thought I understood suffering. I'd thought I'd known what it was to be broken, to be crushed beneath the weight of agony.
I was a fool.
The Devil had a way of redefining misery, of stretching the limits of human tolerance until all that remained was a whimpering, devastated husk.
I was that husk.
I was under the Devil's grasp. I screamed—no, I tried to scream. But my voice was gone, my tongue twisted into a useless lump of flesh.
My body which was once free and once strong, folded in on itself like a marionette with its strings cut. Every muscle shut down, every limb curled inward, returning me to the prison I had known for seventeen years.
I was a child again. A helpless, broken thing.
The Devil stood over me, his overly dark shadow stretching long across the cold marble floor. His eyes burned like an endless pit of fire and malice.
"You dare defy me, Luis? I saved you from this misery, and yet, you test my patience?"
