Shanane stood frozen beneath the crimson glow of the moon, her breath uneven, her body refused to move and her mind racing to make sense of what stood before her.
The woman emerged slowly from behind the tangled trees, her movements smooth and unhurried, as if she had all the time in the world. The forest seemed to bend around her, the shadows deepening, the twisted branches stretching outward like they were reaching for her. The glow Shanane had seen pulsing in the distance was coming from her, as if the woman carried the very essence of the red moon within her.
She tried to breathe, tried to find her voice, but every thought shattered the moment she saw the woman's face.
Her own mother's face.
The breath left her lungs in a choked gasp.
"No" she muttered to jerselft
It wasn't possible. Her mother had died the day she was born. She had never known her, never heard her voice, never felt her touch. The only image she had of her was from old, faded photographs her grandmother had kept in a small wooden box, locked away in a drawer.
But there was no mistaking it.
This woman had the same delicate features, the same high cheekbones, the same warm brown eyes framed by dark lashes. Her hair was long and flowing, the same deep shade of black Shanane had seen in the photographs. She wore a long, flowing gown, the fabric shifting like liquid shadow, absorbing the red light instead of reflecting it.
It was her. It was impossible. Shanane's legs trembled as she took a step back, her mind screaming at her that this was wrong, all of it was wrong.
Her mother, who had been dead for twenty-three years. Her mother, who shouldn't be here.
Shanane's breath hitched.
__Shanane: "You…you can't be real" her voice came out as barely a whisper.
The woman, her mother smiled.
It was gentle, familiar, reassuring. But there was something else beneath it. Something Shanane couldn't name.
__The woman: "My child, it's time for you to open your eyes." the woman said, her voice smooth and melodic, like the hum of an ancient lullaby.
Shanane's pulse roared in her ears.
__Shanane: "Open my eyes?" she repeated, her voice uneven, caught between confusion and the gnawing sense of dread that curled inside her.
Her mother nodded slowly, taking a step closer.
__The woman: "You've been wandering for too long, lost in the blindness of mortal sight."
__Shanane: "I don't understand."*
The woman... No! The thing wearing her mother's face tilted her head, her gaze steady, unwavering.
__The woman: "You need to continue your grandmother's work."
The words slammed into Shanane like ice water, chilling her to the bone.
"Her grandmother's work."
Memories flashed through her mind: the scent of drying herbs, the soft murmur of whispered prayers, the careful hands that had guided her as a child, teaching her how to grind leaves into medicine, how to listen to the whispers of the earth.
Her grandmother had been a healer. But the villagers had called her a witch. And now, this thing was telling Shanane to follow the same path.
She shook her head, trying to step back again, but the earth beneath her felt too soft, too unstable, as if the forest itself was shifting beneath her feet.
__Shanane: "What work? What do you mean?" she demanded, her voice sharper now, her fear cracking into something edged with desperation.
The woman's smile didn't falter.
__The woman: "To see beyond the limits of human sight. To understand what was hidden from you. To embrace the truth your grandmother spent her life protecting."
The braided hair young woman heart slammed against her ribs.
__Shanane: "What truth?"
The woman stepped closer, her presence suffocating, intoxicating, too much, too close.
__The woman: "Find the secret room."
Shanane's breath caught, her blood ran cold. She knew those words. She had heard them before. Not in the waking world but in her nightmares.
"The room."
The one she dreamed of every night. The one with walls painted in blood, with demonic sigils carved deep into the stone. The one where she was trapped, levitating, bound by unseen hands.
Her throat tightened, panic clawing at the edges of her thoughts.
__Shanane: "What room?" she whispered, even though she already knew.
The woman's smile widened slightly, just enough for something unnatural to flicker behind it.
__The woman: "You already know, my child."
Shanane shook her head violently.
"No. No, that's just a dream. It's not real. It can't be real..."
__The woman: "Find it." the woman interrupted smoothly, her voice soft, coaxing, deadly. "And you will have all the answers. You will know why your grandmother died. You will understand everything."
A violent shudder wracked through the young woman's body.
__Shanane: "I don't want to understand."
__The woman: "You don't have a choice." her expression didn't change.
The words sank into Shanane's bones like iron chains, dragging her deeper into the abyss of fear she had been desperately trying to claw her way out of.
"This is a dream. This is a dream. This is a dream." She kept repeating
But it wasn't. It felt too real.
The ground beneath her was solid. The wind curling through the trees was sharp against her skin. The metallic scent of blood still clung to the air.
And the woman standing before her, the impossible, terrifying, unholy woman who wore her mother's face like a mask was staring at her with something ancient and knowing behind her eyes.
Shanane's breathing turned ragged, frantic.
__Shanane: "Why are you doing this?" she rasped, her hands trembling at her sides.
The woman didn't answer. She only raised a single hand, pale, graceful, inhuman.
And the moment her fingers curled, Shanane's vision shattered. The forest vanished. The red moon exploded into darkness.
And suddenly, She was falling.
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∆☆ ATHERAMOND ☆∆
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The world collapsed around her.
Shanane felt the ground give way beneath her feet, a sharp, stomach-churning sensation of freefall ripping through her body. The air rushed past her ears, a deafening roar, but there was no wind, no resistance, no sense of time or space, only the overwhelming, terrifying emptiness of the void swallowing her whole.
She tried to scream, but the sound never left her throat.
Her limbs flailed instinctively, reaching for something, anything to hold onto, but there was nothing. Only darkness.
Then, as suddenly as it had begun. It stopped.The impact never came. She was standing.
Her breathing came ragged and uneven, her pulse still hammering violently as she took in her new surroundings.
She was no longer in the forest.
She was somewhere else.
The air was thick, suffocating, laced with the overwhelming stench of blood. Her pulse faltered as she turned slowly, her stomach twisting in dread.
She knew this place. Even before her eyes fully adjusted to the flickering, dim light, she knew. It was the room from her nightmares.
The walls were covered in blood, deep crimson smears forming twisting sigils and symbols she didn't recognize. The markings stretched across every inch of stone, some fresh and glistening, others dried and cracked like old wounds. The entire space was bathed in a sickly, pulsing glow, as if the very walls were breathing.
The iron taste of blood coated the back of her tongue, thick and nauseating.
Her breath came faster, chest rising and falling in sharp, uneven gasps. This isn't real. But it felt real. Too real.
She looked down. The black circle was beneath her feet. The one from her dreams. The one that bound her, that held her suspended in the air while something unseen coiled around her, holding her still.
She was standing at the center of it now. Her feet were on solid ground. But she could feel it. The weight of something pressing against her skin, wrapping around her wrists, curling against her throat like invisible chains.
A violent tremor ran through her as she staggered back, barely keeping herself upright. Her mind screamed at her to move, to run, to wake up. But she wasn't asleep. Not this time.
Something shifted in the air. A presence. It was here.
The same force that had pulled her through her nightmares, the same unseen entity that had watched her, that had been waiting for her.
She felt it before she saw it, the way the shadows trembled, the way the flickering light dimmed as if something massive had entered the space.
Then, she heard a voice. It was low, smooth, curling through the darkness like smoke.
__???: "You found it."
Shanane's breath hitched. Her body went rigid, every muscle locking in place. Because the voice wasn't just any voice.
It was her own voice.
A cold, sharp terror slashed through her veins as she turned toward the sound.
Standing at the far edge of the room, just beyond the circle, bathed in shadows, was herself.
Or rather something wearing her face.
Her mind refused to process what she was seeing.
The young woman, the thing looked exactly like her. Same dark eyes, same sharp features, same long, braided hair. But there was something wrong.
Her skin was too pale. Her eyes were too dark, swallowing the dim light, reflecting nothing. And when she smiled, it wasn't human.
She felt her entire body turn to ice.
__Shanane: "What… are you?" she whispered, her voice barely her own.
The thing tilted its head, watching her with a kind of amused curiosity, like a predator playing with its prey.
__The thing: "I am you." it said simply, its voice an exact replica of hers, but layered. As if something else was speaking beneath it, something deeper, something older.
__Shanane: "No! No, you're not." she shook her head violently
__The thing: "I have been waiting for you." it took a step forward, slow, deliberate.
__Shanane: "Why?" her stomach twisted violently.
The thing, her shadow, her mirror, her nightmare made fleshsmiled wider.
__The thing: "Because it's time."
__Shanane: "Time for what?" her hands clenched into fists, nails digging into her palms, her breath coming fast and uneven.
The room seemed to shudder, the air thickening, the markings on the walls pulsing.
__The thing: "For you to know."
The words slammed into her like a physical force. Shanane's vision blurred, a searing pain tearing through her skull.
__Shanane: "To know what?" she gasped.
The shadow of herself took another step forward, the light flickering violently around it.
__Shanane: "Who you are."
Something inside her cracked open.A flood of images, sensations, whispers, too much, too fast. She stumbled back, pressing her hands against her temples, her knees buckling.
"This isn't real. This isn't real."
But the voice, her own voice echoed through the chamber, through her bones, through the very fabric of her existence.
__The thing: "Wake up, Shanane. Wake up and see"
The darkness around her collapsed inward. And then, she remembered.
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∆☆ ATHERAMOND ☆∆
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A sharp gasp tore from Shanane's
throat as she jolted upright, her body drenched in sweat, her breath ragged and uneven. The sensation of falling still clung to her bones, the phantom pain in her skull pulsing like an echo of something she wasn't supposed to remember.
Her hands trembled as she clutched the blanket, her chest rising and falling in frantic, shallow breaths. The room was dark, the faint glow of candlelight flickering weakly against the wooden walls.
But something was wrong.
The air was heavy, too thick.
The silence wasn't empty. Slowly, cautiously, she turned her head. And her blood ran cold.
They were there. Standing around her bed: Figures, shadows, creatures.
Their forms twisted and unnatural, their limbs long and wrong, stretching in ways the human body never should. Their skin, if it was skin at all, was dark, too dark, absorbing the faint candlelight instead of reflecting it. Their bodies rippled like smoke barely contained within a shape, shifting, writhing.
Their faces..No. They had no faces, only hollows where eyes should be. Deep, gaping voids that seemed to pull at the space around them, swallowing the light, the air, the very fabric of the room itself.
Shanane's pulse screamed in her ears. She couldn't move. She couldn't breathe. They were watching her. Not moving. Not speaking. Just standing there, waiting.
A wave of suffocating dread coiled around her lungs, pinning her in place, pressing down on her like an invisible hand.
They weren't just in her nightmares anymore. They were here, in her room, around her bed. And they weren't leaving.
A sound slithered through the silence. it was a whisper: low, breathless, crawling beneath her skin like something cold and wet dragging across her bones. It didn't come from just one of them.
It came from all of them. Soft at first, a murmur, a hush, a secret spoken in a language that did not belong to this world.
The words were impossible, layered upon themselves, overlapping, distorting, shifting between tones too quickly to follow. Some syllables were sharp and jagged, like the cracking of brittle bones. Others were thick, guttural, wet, like something drowning as it spoke.
The room shuddered with the weight of their voices. Shanane's body refused to move. Her mind screamed at her to run, to fight, to do something, but she was frozen, caught in the unseen grip of something ancient, something unknowable.
The whispers grew. They filled every corner of the room, curling into the walls, sinking into her skin.
Then, one of them moved. Not like a person. Not like anything human. Its body jerked forward, as if pulled by invisible strings, the tendrils of darkness that made up its form writhing against the candlelight.
It leaned down. Close, too close.
And then, it spoke. Its voice was wrong. Deep and stretched, layered over itself in echoes that didn't belong. A voice that was both whisper and growl, both near and far, like something speaking from the bottom of a blackened pit.
__The thing: "The Master is ready for you."
The room tilted. The air collapsed inward. Shanane's vision blurred, her heart slamming against her ribs as the words slithered through her skull, seeping into the deepest, darkest parts of her mind.
And suddenly, the whispers stopped. Silence and stillness filled the room. A moment of nothingness so absolute it felt like the world had ceased to exist.
The candles blew out. And the darkness took her.