She said nothing, obediently sinking to her knees before Ellie’s grave, banging her forehead against the stone.
Every year on this day, he found a new way to torment her. The first year, he made her scatter her father’s ashes at the grave and gather them again, bone by bone, until not a gram was missing—her fingers shattered and bleeding. The second year, she carried a hundred-pound slab up the mountain to carve Yinyin’s tombstone herself. The third year, she copied the Sutra of Rebirth a thousand times, her hands raw and bloody. The fourth year, she spent the night locked in the cemetery with five half-starved dogs.
This year, bodyguards arrived carrying a large box. Inside were all her memories with Soren.
He picked up their wedding photo, his wrist trembling.
“Soren, don’t…” she choked, dragging herself forward to clutch his leg.
But he smashed the frame to the ground, glass shattering across the wet grass. One by one, he destroyed everything: the scarf he’d knitted for her, the couple’s mugs, the blood-stained wedding dress—until only their marriage certificate remained.