The seven girls lay beside each other now. Quiet. Still. Their bodies lined up like fallen stars, scattered too soon across a sky that never gave them a chance to shine
They looked so vulnerable—too vulnerable for this world.
Too soft for the blood-stained wood beneath them. Too pure for the foul air that still carried the stench of what had been done to them. And yet, even in death, they carried a strange kind of grace. Like their innocence hadn't been fully taken. Like even the worst kind of monster couldn't erase who they once were.
They were girls.
That's what cut the deepest. They weren't soldiers. Not warriors. Just girls. Stolen from their lives, stripped of their futures, and thrown into a nightmare they never agreed to. They didn't die in battle. They didn't fall in honor. They were used, discarded. Forgotten by everyone except the demon who kept them.
But not by me.
Now, the seven of them lay side by side, finally outside that cursed cabin, no longer part of the demon's collection. No longer trophies. No longer hidden behind filth and silence.
I wanted to close their eyes. A part of me reached out, fingers shaking, to do it. It felt like the right thing. Like a small, final mercy. But I stopped.
They would have wanted to see the sun.
Just once more.
Because the last thing they saw was darkness. Not just the kind that fills a room, but the kind that seeps into your soul—the kind that watches, touches, takes. They never got to see the dawn break through the clouds. Never saw light pour across the waves. Never got to look up and feel the warmth of morning on their skin again.
So I let their eyes stay open. Let them face the sky. Let the sun be the last thing to touch them.
If nothing else, they deserved that. A moment of light. A moment of calm. A moment where the world didn't take, didn't hurt, didn't bury them deeper.
I sat beside them for a while. Didn't speak. Didn't move. Just breathed the same air they never would again. The guilt sat heavy on my chest. Every inhale was a weight. Every exhale a silent apology. For not being there sooner. For not saving them. For surviving when they didn't.
I looked at each of their faces—soft, delicate, frozen in that place between pain and peace. And I wanted to scream. At the sky. At the sea. At the demon who still snored like he hadn't stolen seven lives and left them broken. But I didn't.
I stayed silent.
Because this wasn't my moment. It was theirs. And they deserved quiet. They deserved gentleness. They deserved to be mourned, not pitied. Honored, not forgotten.
Seven girls. Seven names I would never know. Seven futures erased. Seven lights put out before they had the chance to shine.
But at least now, they had the sun.
Not much. But it was something.
And sometimes, after all the cruelty the world offers, something is the most you can give.
Yet I wanted to give them more.
More than just a place to rest. More than sunlight and a quiet goodbye. More than this pale offering from a man too late to matter. I didn't know them. Not their names, not their stories, not the sound of their laughter or the shape of their dreams. They were strangers—complete and utter strangers. Faces I'd never seen before, voices I would never hear.
They weren't my family. Not my friends. Not even fleeting acquaintances. By all logic, they should've been just another tragedy I passed by. Just another nightmare to file away in a world full of them. But I couldn't do that. I didn't do that.
Why?
Why did I want to give them peace so badly?
Was it my morality? The last scraps of humanity clinging to me like salt on my skin? Was it the legality—the learned ethics from a life once lived in a society where justice was printed in textbooks but rarely seen in practice?
Maybe.
Or maybe… it was something else.
Maybe it was the simple fact that they never had a choice. That this sick, cruel world chewed them up before they even had a chance to fight back. They were dragged into it—stolen, silenced, desecrated. And even in death, even reduced to pieces, they looked tired. Like their souls had long since slipped away, worn down by days that only ever got worse.
Maybe I just saw that tiredness. And maybe I understood it.
Because I was tired too.
I don't know.
I don't know why I care this much. Why the sight of seven lifeless bodies, unfamiliar and unnamed, makes my chest feel like it's being crushed under something far heavier than guilt. Maybe I don't want to know. Maybe knowing would hurt more.
I… just… don't know.
All I do know is that I promised them something. Not with words. Not out loud. But in the silence, when I looked at them lying there in the sunlight they never got to see while they were alive—I made a vow.
I told them, in whatever way a man like me can, that they would get what they deserved. Not revenge. Not violence. Not just blood for blood. But recognition. Peace. Honor. A memory that would last longer than the screams that once filled that cabin.
And that promise… that one?
That one I'll keep.
I've broken many promises in my life. Too many. Promises made casually, made in laughter, made to get what I wanted in the moment. Some I broke before the sun even set on the day I made them. Some I broke with regret. Some I never thought twice about.
But a few… a rare few… I meant.
A rare few I swore I'd fulfill even if it cost me my life.
And this one? This promise to seven broken girls with no one left to fight for them?
This one is carved into me.
Because what is life to a tired man?
What is breath when it feels like poison in your lungs? What is survival when all it means is dragging your bones through another day of loss, of fear, of emptiness?
To a tired man, life is a weight. Not a gift.
To a man like me—alone, sick with regret, drowning in a world that isn't his—life is just a thread. One tug away from snapping.
So if this thread of mine has to be burned up to keep that promise, so be it.
I'll spend the last of my strength giving them something they never got in life.
Dignity.
I'll carry them in my memory until my body gives out. I'll speak of them if I ever find ears willing to listen. And if there are none, then I'll carve their story into whatever I leave behind.
I don't know why this matters so much. Maybe I'm just trying to make sense of something that never will. Maybe I'm trying to build meaning out of rubble. But in a world that took everything from them, I have to give something back.
Even if it's the only thing I have left.
Myself.