For a moment, no one spoke.
Then he smiled.
Not the faint, distant smile he had worn before, but something fuller.
Something real.
“Yes,” he said.
He lifted his gaze, meeting the eyes of those watching.
“I was wrong.”
A murmur rippled through the room.
“About what?” the warden asked.
Elias glanced back at the mirror.
“I thought there was nothing left of me,” he said. “But I was just… not looking.”
He paused.
“And if I had looked sooner…”
He did not finish the sentence.
He didn’t need to.
The room fell silent.
The kind of silence that presses against your ears, that makes every breath feel too loud.
Elias closed his eyes briefly, then opened them again, focusing on his reflection.
“I remember now,” he said softly.
The warden gave a signal.
The process began.
In those final moments, as the world narrowed to a single point, Elias did not think of the crimes that had defined him.
He did not think of the headlines, or the whispers, or the name they had given him.
He thought of the boy he had once been.
