ROMAN
I could feel the fever burning under my skin, each heartbeat like a drum in my skull. The room was hazy, the edges of everything melting into shadows, and yet I could feel the world pressing in on me.
The warmth of the bed beneath me wasn’t enough to ground me. Something else stirred beneath the haze, something older, deeper.
Then the voices came, jagged and sharp against the fog. At first, I couldn’t understand them. They weren’t in this room.
They were farther away, echoing across a distance that felt like centuries. And then I heard it—his voice. “You… you’re not fit. You’re not meant to lead.”
It wasn't strange hearing it spoken aloud, hearing myself being condemned in a way I’d buried so far away. Yet the words hit me harder than the heat inside my chest.
I tried to push t
