The Villa (2)
Sebastian examined the skeletal remains with a somber gaze. One of them seemed to belong to a woman since it had a dress stained with blood on it.
The woman's once-azure dress, now threadbare, clung to her decayed bones.
One hand still grasped a rattle, while another curled in a protective embrace around a small skeleton still nestled in her chest.
These were mothers and children.
"And here I thought things couldn't be more fucked…"
This child, dressed in what remained of simple clothes, bore no remarkable features save for the unbreakable bond of death that kept it clutched to its mother.
These people had died here, in this room, awaiting rescue that never came.
Yet they had not been alone. The woman's last moments were of protecting her child, refusing to surrender her embrace even in death. For centuries, even millennia, they remained like this.