The iron gate closed behind her with a sound that stayed in her bones.
Clang.
She did not flinch.
Years ago, that sound would have made her cry. Years ago, she would have begged, screamed, clawed at the ground. But now, as the gate locked, she only stood still.
Her name used to mean something.
She was born into wealth. Real wealth. Old money. The kind that bought silence, obedience, and clean lies. She had lived in a mansion with white halls and cold smiles. Servants bowed. Teachers praised her. Guests whispered that she was perfect.
Then her brothers decided she was inconvenient.
They told the world she was unstable. Dangerous. Unwell. They said it with calm faces and gentle voices. They said it for the sake of the family. For the sake of their adopted sister.
The sister she had barely met.
On the day she was taken away, her brothers did not look at her. They signed the papers quickly. Efficiently. Like they were throwing away an old object.
She remembered waiting for them to visit.
They never did.
Years passed inside the asylum.
Time did not move normally there. Days blended into nights. Screams echoed through halls that smelled of medicine and rust. Patients laughed at walls. Others cried until their voices broke. Some never spoke at all.
At first, she suffered like everyone else.
She was locked in white rooms. Tied to beds. Given pills that burned her throat and blurred her thoughts. She learned quickly that crying brought pain. Fighting brought worse.
So she stopped.
Little by little, something inside her changed.
The fear faded first.
Then the anger.
Then the sadness.
One morning, she woke up and realized she felt nothing.
No hate for her brothers.
No longing for the life she lost.
No fear of the doctors.
Nothing.
That was when they began to fear her.
She stood now in the open yard, the sky gray above her. Patients gathered around her without realizing why. They always did. When she walked, they made space. When she sat, they grew quiet.
She did not command them.
They obeyed anyway.
A nurse watched from the doorway, fingers tight around her clipboard. "She's calm today," the nurse whispered.
"She's always calm," another replied. "That's what's wrong."
The head doctor arrived late. He was a tall man with tired eyes and a stiff back. He had worked here for twenty years. He had seen violent patients, clever ones, broken ones.
He had never seen her.
She looked at him as he approached. Her eyes were clear. Too clear.
"How are you feeling today?" he asked.
She tilted her head slightly, as if considering the question. "I don't know," she said honestly.
That answer made his throat dry.
He nodded and made notes he did not understand himself. Diagnosis words meant nothing around her. She did not fit.
Later that night, she sat in the common room. The lights flickered. Shadows moved like living things.
A man sat across from her.
He was a patient, at least on paper. His clothes were plain. His hands steady. His eyes sharp in a way the others were not.
"You've grown," he said quietly.
She looked at him. "I didn't know I was growing."
"You did," he replied. "Pain shaped you. Emptiness finished the work."
She felt no reaction to his words. Only interest.
"You should be careful," he continued. "This world doesn't forgive what it doesn't understand."
"What world?" she asked.
"The one outside these walls," he said. "And the one inside them."
She studied him. "You speak like a doctor."
A faint smile crossed his face. "I was. Long ago."
Silence stretched between them.
"Behave yourself when you leave," he said at last. "Learn how to act human again."
"Why?" she asked.
"So you won't be discarded," he answered softly.
Her fingers curled slightly.
Leave?
For the first time in years, a thought stirred.
Not a feeling.
A plan.
From the hallway, footsteps approached. Guards. Doctors. Papers rustled.
The head doctor's voice shook as he said, "Prepare her file."
She stood.
The patients watched.
And somewhere deep inside her empty chest, something began to move.