CHAPTER 5

ZARA

Sleep came like a thief in the night and I hadn’t meant to close my eyes. Vera was still awake, humming that strange old tune by the fire, something so ancient it felt like the forest itself was breathing through her voice. The pot on the hearth bubbled softly, the stew was thick with herbs, and the warm glow of the flames painted the wooden walls with restless shadows.

I told myself I would stay awake. I told myself I wouldn’t let my guard down. But exhaustion didn’t ask for permission, it dragged me under. My limbs grew heavy, my chest tight with a pull I couldn’t resist, and before I could fight it, my body betrayed me.

I fell asleep.

And that was when the pain began.

Not the dull ache of bruises. Not the shallow sting of cuts I’d long forgotten. No…this pain was different. This pain was familiar. It was the one I thought I had buried, the one Caelum dug into me with his rejection. It was the pain of my soul tearing away from his.

It was the bond ripping.

It was me breaking.

“No…” My throat was raw, though no sound passed my lips. My cry existed only in the hollow silence of the dream.

The ground beneath me cracked, fissures splitting like veins across a darkened plain. It broke open and I fell, tumbling into an abyss where there was no end, no bottom, only darkness waiting to swallow me whole.

My body convulsed. My limbs started jerking and my breath was failing me. Every nerve lit up with fire and I couldn’t move or wake. The darkness clung to me like chains, binding tighter and tighter until I swore I would snap.

Then I saw them.

Two figures. Their backs turned, shrouded in mist.

I knew them instantly. I didn’t need to see their faces. My chest clenched, hope clawing out of me like a wounded animal. My voice shook as I reached out with trembling hands.

“Mother… Father!”

They didn’t turn. Not at first. They stood there like statues, shadows pressing against their outlines. But I knew. I knew it was them. I would have known anywhere.

When they turned, the world shattered.

Their eyes were gone. Empty sockets stared at me, hollow and black, weeping shadows instead of tears. Their skin was carved open, torn with deep wounds that never healed, blood spilling endlessly. And my mother…my beautiful mother, her head wasn’t where it should have been. It dangled grotesquely in her own hands, severed from her body, her lips twitching as if trying to form my name even in death.

My stomach lurched. I staggered back, choking on bile. “No… no, no, no…”

They stepped toward me. One step. Two. Each thud echoed inside my skull like war drums and then…more appeared.

Not just one pair. 

Dozens. 

A hundred. 

Copies of their mutilated bodies spilled out of the mist, surrounding me. My parents multiplied into a nightmare army, all broken, all bleeding, all staring with hollow sockets that pierced through flesh and bone.

“This isn’t real. This isn’t real. This isn’t real!”

I spun in every direction. 

Left. 

Right. 

Behind me. 

There was no escape.

“Stop!” I screamed, but my voice was trapped inside my skull, muffled, and swallowed by the dream. Nobody heard me. Nobody ever heard me.

The first hand touched me. Cold and wet. It crawled against my arm. Another wrapped around my throat. Another pinned my shoulders. I screamed soundlessly as more of them dragged me down. Their fingers dug in, suffocating me, pressing shadows into my skin until I could no longer breathe.

It wasn’t just suffocation. It was drowning. Drowning in the faces of my parents twisted into monsters.

Their mouths opened, but no words came out. Just silence and a terrifying hollow stare.

My chest burned. My lungs screamed for air that wouldn’t come. I thrashed, kicked, and begged, though it felt like only inside my mind. The darkness shoved down my throat, filled my nose, pressed into my eyes.

And just before the last of me gave out

I saw them.

Five men in the distance. Tall and cloaked in black. They stood in perfect silence, watching as I suffocated beneath the weight of corpses wearing my parents’ faces.

They didn’t move or speak. But their presence made the air colder and heavier, like the nightmare bent itself to their will.

The one in the center raised his hand.

It dripped.

A heart. 

A beating heart!!!

Freshly torn, blood sliding down his arm in thick streams. He held it out toward me. Not throwing it or crushing it. Offering it.

As if urging me to take it.

But I couldn’t. My arms were pinned, my lungs collapsing. My body wasn’t mine anymore. It belonged to the suffocating shadows.

The suffocation won.

Stars exploded in my vision. My chest caved. My thoughts fractured into static.

And still…the five cloaked figures watched me in waiting silence.

I was fading and slipping into nothingness.

But then…another shift.

Far in the corner of my mind, where the nightmare bled into something else, someone stood.

Broad shoulders. Hair like silver fire catching a light that didn’t exist. His eyes fixed on me, wide and shaking.

Caelum.