Ethan Caldwell knew with absolute certainty that this was not a physical wound. Julian's frantic scratching and the tightening grip on his own wrist during his earlier panic attack could never have created a bruised indentation that perfectly mimicked the shape of an iron shackle.
The man's pupils violently contracted. His mind was instantaneously dragged back to Julian's haunting, fragmented accounts: the horrifying, chilling clatter of colliding iron chains, the solitary iron cell suffocatingly thick with darkness, and the absolute, extreme isolation residing at the very bottom of the abyss.
The very thing that caused Ethan's chest to constrict and his breathing to grow unbearably heavy was the horrifying fact that this physical mark had manifested despite Julian never having been actually bound by iron and steel in their current reality.
It acted exactly like an invisible curse.
