🗡️ Chapter 02🗡️

Luckily for me, the heavy front doors were made of a reinforced material that resisted the heat, so they hadn't caught yet.

I slammed my weight against them, pushing the doors open. Inside was a literal hellscape. The whole place wasn't fully gone yet, but the fire was climbing the walls and devouring the corners, sending thick, black smoke swirling toward the ceiling.

I scanned the foyer, my eyes stinging, my heart hammering so hard it felt like it would burst. I was praying, begging whatever gods were listening, that they weren't home. That they had escaped.

But the world went cold when I saw him.

My father was the first one I found. He was lying at the foot of the stairs in a massive, spreading pool of his own blood. I rushed forward like a madwoman, skidding on the floor until I was on my knees beside him. I grabbed his shoulders, shaking him desperately.

"Dad! Dad, wake up!" I screamed, slapping his cheek to get a reaction. "Dad, I’m back! Zelda’s back! Your daughter is home!"

I was sobbing, the words catching in my throat, but that was when the logic finally caught up to my eyes. My breath hitched. His chest... it was hollow. I blinked, my vision blurred by tears, and slowly reached my hand out to touch him. My stomach turned.

His heart had been ripped out. Physically torn from his chest.

A raw, guttural scream tore out of my throat. I held his lifeless body in my arms, rocking back and forth as I cried bitterly. The heat of the fire was nothing compared to the cold agony slicing through my soul.

"Who did this?" I choked out through the sobs. "Who?!"

I stayed there for what felt like forever, cradling him and crying until my throat was raw. But then, a terrifying thought broke through the grief. Mom.

I forced myself to stand up, my legs shaking and my vision tunneling, as I turned to go look for my mother.

I looked around, desperately hoping she’d managed to get out, but then I spotted her. She was slumped against the far wall, her body small and broken against the floral wallpaper. I rushed over, my knees hitting the hard floor with a thud.

"Mom! Mom!" I slapped her cheek, my hands shaking so much I could barely aim. "The same thing... Mother, please answer me!" I begged, the smoke making my eyes burn as I leaned over her,

There was no reaction. I sat there, paralyzed, the sound of the roaring fire fading behind the sound of my own sobbing.

Just then, I felt a weak, flickering squeeze on my hand. My head snapped up. My mother’s eyes were cracked open just a sliver, glazed but focused on me. "My daughter... you are back..." Her voice was a ragged, wet whisper, her breathing heavy and shallow.

I swallowed hard, a tiny spark of hope flared in my chest. "Mom... thank goodness. I’ll take you to the hospital. Right now." I started to stand, trying to hook my arms under her to lift her up, but she gave me a look, a look so heavy and final that it stopped me cold.

"Mother, please let me save you! I beg you!" I cried, the tears spilling onto her shirt.

She slowly raised a trembling hand, her fingers grazing my cheek. "I am sorry we... we didn't get to celebrate your coming home," she whispered. She swallowed hard, a grimace of pain crossing her face. "We’ve done a lot of things in the past, Zelda... and we deserve this. Just because we were your best parents in the world... doesn't mean we were good people." Her voice cracked, failing her.

I shook my head violently, my face a mess of tears and mucus. "No, no! You were good people! The best parents ever!"

A tiny, sad smile touched her lips.

"Tell me who... who did this?" I asked, my voice trembling so hard I could barely get the words out.

"It's alpha drakan.." she muttered. Her eyes seemed to wander for a second. "But it's not his fault... we caused it... Just... just don't let him get you. You can return to the UK... and..."

Her hand slipped from my face and thudded onto the floor. Her eyes went still.

"Mother? Mother!" I slapped her cheek again, harder this time. I waited for her to breathe, for her to blink, for anything. But there was nothing.

I screamed. I sat there in the heat and the smoke and I just screamed. My beloved parents,the only people who ever loved me,they were gone.

"No, this has to be a dream," I choked out. I reached down and pinched my arm as hard as I could, twisting the skin until it bruised, praying I would wake up in my seat on the plane.

But I didn't wake up. The fire kept burning, and my parents stayed dead. It was real.

A heavy roar of thunder shook the ground beneath me, and a second later, the sky broke open.

The rain came down in a violent, sudden sheet, as if the heavens were trying to wash away the sin of what had happened in this house.

I slowly forced myself up, my muscles screaming and my lungs burning from the soot. I couldn't leave them here to be consumed by the flames. With a strength I didn't know I had, I grabbed my mother’s hands and dragged her toward the door, then went back for my father. I coughed so hard I thought I’d heave, my throat raw from smoke and screaming, as I pulled him across the floor and out onto the wet grass.

***

I sat there on the lawn, the freezing rain drenching me to the bone, staring at my parents’ bodies. I was numb, yet every time I looked at them, a fresh wave of tears blurred my vision, mixing with the rainwater streaming down my face. I just couldn't wrap my head around it. In a matter of hours, I went from a student coming home to a girl with nothing but ghosts.

The fire that had been roaring over the mansion started to hiss and die down, the downpour acting as a cold, indifferent blanket over the ruins of my life.

I eventually stood up, moving like a puppet on strings. I found a shovel in the gardening shed near the edge of the estate and walked to the center of the garden, the place where my mother used to sit in the sun. I began to dig. Every time the blade hit the mud, a sob escaped my chest. The more I dug, the harder I cried, the dirt staining my hands and clothes until I was as much a part of the earth as they were about to be.

I was burying the only love I had ever known, and with every shovel of dirt, the girl I used to be was dying right along with them.