Her feet dangled in the air, the darkness making it impossible for her to tell whether the floor was just a few centimeters away or if she was suspended over an abyss. Xenagrosh flexed her limbs one at a time, counting at least a dozen of cuts and many more bruises.

Much to her surprise, the cuts started shallow on her face and the back of her head, becoming deeper as they moved down toward her navel. They stopped right below her right lung and extended all the way to her back.

The sense of smell that made her the best tracker in the Organization returned to her first. She smelled the sweet scent of fresh blood first, too much to belong only to her. Then, she sensed the acrid stench of rotten flesh and the metal sting of dried blood.

The air, instead, was fresh and carried no trace of dust.

‘This is too dirty to be a slaughterhouse and too clean to be a tomb.’ She thought, squinting her eyes in an attempt to catch a glimpse of her surroundings.

The Shadow Dragon’s mystical and enhanced senses slowly returned to her, but for some reason, they lagged behind her consciousness. Everything came to her dull and muffled, as if she were trapped in an invisible cocoon and could perceive the world around her only through the vibrations in the silk.

The silence in the room was almost absolute, allowing Xenagrosh to sense the slow drip of something that her instincts told her was someone else’s blood. There was only one more noise in the room, but she couldn’t tell if it was a labored breath or a death rattle.