(Aarya’s POV)

People assume the day you break is loud.
Screaming. Crying. Chaos.

Mine was silent.

The night I turned fourteen, my best friend destroyed my world with a single lie.
And the people who were supposed to protect me… believed her.

My mother’s disgust.
My father’s disappointment.
My siblings’ mocking laughter.

I stood there, waiting for someone—anyone—to say,
“Aarya, we believe you.”
But no one did.

Something inside me froze.
A switch flipped.
My emotions shut down like a generator cut off from power.

I didn’t cry.
I didn’t beg.
I didn’t shout.

I simply stopped feeling.

I became invisible in my own home, walking through rooms like a shadow no one cared to notice.
Meals passed without words.
Days blurred into years.
I learned to breathe without living.

And on my eighteenth birthday, when the house was asleep,
I packed a small bag, walked out the door,
and chose the only thing left—

Freedom.
Even if freedom meant surviving alone.

I didn’t look back.
There was nothing worth looking back at.