[Come back... Please.]
"Ah!" yelled the young woman, suddenly getting up like a devil coming out of his box.
"Aina!" replied another, filled with undisguised worry.
The young woman gripped the white silk sheets with such force that one of them tore. She was short of breath as if she had just come out of the water after almost drowning, and her forehead and the skin on her back were damp with sweat. Her hands were still trembling from the scene she had just seen in her dreams, and she realized to her amazement that she was crying.
"Aina! Answer me !" urged the voice, which she recognized as that of Elvan, who was visibly next to her.
She only managed to gasp, trying as best she could to catch her breath which seemed to be escaping her, as well as to calm the disorderly beating of her heart.
'What happened... ?' she asked herself, her ears still ringing from the shock she had suffered. That dream.
This sinister dream which had nevertheless seemed so... vivid to her.
'But was it really one?'
She didn't know, but for now, she needed to regain her composure if she wanted to try to understand what was happening inside of her. She focused her attention on the room she was in, trying to quell the terror that was barely escaping from her. The familiar white curtains of her room, her small, uncomfortable but reassuring bed, and that soothing smell of leather that hung in the air.
'Pull yourself together... You're not in this place anymore.'
"Aina...!" Elvan reiterated, this time attracting her attention.
She met his familiar green irises and felt a calm return to her almost immediately. She had come back to reality, finally... Seeing him, she sighed and her muscles relaxed, so much so that she collapsed forward like a puppet without strings.
"Elvan…" she whispered, her voice trembling and her expression livid.
She saw relief pass over the young man's features before he slipped his hand behind her back as if to comfort her. She appreciated his presence here, which was very welcome after the nightmares in which she had thought she was lost.
" What happened ?" he then questioned her, moving his chair closer to the bed on which she was, slipped under her cotton duvet.
'What happened...'
"I'm not sure... I..." she tried, slightly worried that the images from her dream would come back to her, along with the emotions they were associated with. "I had another seizure and…"
She hesitated for a few moments to tell Elvan about her dream, not because she didn't trust him, but simply because she didn't know what to think about it... It all seemed so real to her and yet...
"Take your time." he encouraged her with a vague smile, which convinced her to continue.
"I had a dream... Well, I don't really know if it was a dream or..."
Elvan stood up abruptly, his eyes wide, to stand in front of her and hold her by the shoulders, as if to detect in her eyes the lies that could be hidden there.
" A memory ?" he ventured, before she nodded.
He looked like he didn't believe it and to be honest... She wasn't sure what she saw either. A memory... She had been waiting so long for Her's to reappear, that she had difficulty convincing herself that one of them could come back to her in such a... Strange way.
"I'm glad for you!" he rejoiced, smiling, before his expression of joy faded in the face of the young woman's somber face. " What is it ?"
Aina bit her lip, hesitant about what to do next, before running a hand over her forehead to wipe away the sweat.
"I'm not sure if it was a memory, maybe it was just a dream, that..."
Elvan moved next to her and took her hand, almost covering her with his compassionate and supportive gaze, which had always soothed her in any situation. He was particularly good at listening and advising. He was quite a master in the art of interacting with others since he was the only one who could thus channel and satisfy all the members of the Signavit.
"What do you think, deep down?"
Aina looked down thoughtfully.
"What I saw was unbelievable…" she began before stopping, her eyes lost in space.
" But ?" he added, to encourage her to continue.
"...But the feelings I felt there made me feel like I had experienced that before."
The fear, the incomprehension, and the disappointment were so intense, so... violent that she deduced that this could not be a simple dream. It was also true that she remembered the whole scene precisely and faithfully, which was highly improbable for a dream, which was generally vague and approximate.
"You regained one of your memories. It's good." Elvan whispered gently.
Aina, however, could not rejoice. She was certainly rather happy to know that these memories were coming back, but she had to admit that she was afraid of discovering who she had really been.
"Are you not happy?" he questioned her as if sensing her hesitation.
Elvan obviously did not understand her strange reaction, so he waited for her to explain, handing her a glass containing a dark liquid and a small red tablet, which she immediately recognized.
'The Elixir of Dreams.'
The only substance, Medicis prescribed, allowed her to reduce the untimely appearance of these attacks. She didn't ask herself any questions and slipped the remedy into her mouth, before swallowing a mouthful of the cloudy mixture that Elvan had prepared for her.
"I'm afraid of what I might remember. My first memory was terrifying and, likely, I didn't have a good life..."
Elvan remained silent as he listened to her, seeming to reflect on her words, before pressing his fingers a little tighter on the back of the young woman's hand, as if to show his support in this difficult ordeal.
"Take your time, you don't need to rush."
This was true. Nobody said that she had to regain her memory right away. Her first memory may have been traumatic for her, but there was no guarantee that the others would be too. It was, after all, just a few snippets of the life she had lived before. If she gave up now because of fear, all the years she had suffered would have been for nothing. Even if she chose not to remember, these things wouldn't disappear, and then...
'I must make the effort to remember this mother who protected me.'
[Run!]
Her terrified, shrill voice still echoed in her mind, so much so that her hands shivered.
'To think that all this started from a mere picture.'
And at this thought Aina raised her head towards Elvan, who was staring at her with a strangely calm and silent air.
"What about the banquet?"
Elvan sighed, smiling softly.
"Don't worry, I took care of everything. The masters and mistresses returned to their rooms."
She breathed in relief. Fortunately, the family's monthly event had not been spoiled by her crisis... She peered out the window and realized from the direction of the red sun that it was already very late and that she still had a lot of things to do. So, she pushed back her duvet to place her feet on the cold floor.
"Aina?" asked Elvan, who was surprised to see her move.
"I have to go back to work, I haven't yet…" she mumbled before the man stopped her with his hand and nodded.
"You aren't well Aina, Master Rage has dismissed you for today. Rest."
He signaled her not to move and stood up, readjusting his suit, a sign that he would soon leave the room. Master Rage had dismissed her... This was unusual. Knowing him, it was highly unlikely that he would have this kind of reaction, even for a servant. The patriarch was more the type to watch a person die because saving them would waste his time.
Charity was therefore not in his nature. Perhaps he had been forced by his wife, who was much more generous and altruistic than him?
'This must be it...'
She didn't see how Rage could have been so considerate otherwise.
"Don't forget to take your treatment before going to sleep."
The young woman gave a vague smile.
'He behaves like a mother.'
A mother... One of the people she thought she never had in her life. She also had parents. A father and mother, as strange and mysterious as they were, with whom she had been happy at one time before all this happened. She stared blankly at her hands and felt like she saw the blood that covered them earlier. Her mother's.
Ultimately, she didn't know what happened to her mother, or her father after that. Aside from the blood and fear on the woman's face, she saw nothing else. She had heard, imagined, and interpreted... But nothing was certain. Maybe she had misunderstood? Maybe her father wasn't a monster...?
She didn't know if she doubted it or if she just hoped it with all her heart. After all, who could have wanted one of their parents to be the incarnation of a demon? Nobody. So, she prayed deep in her heart that what she had seen was only the result of a misunderstanding on her part and not a sad truth, the outcome of which she was not sure she wanted to know.
" I will not forget."
Elvan nodded and she saw him carefully open the door, before starting to rush outside. She watched him take a step down the hallway, his back to her, before he stopped in his tracks and a slight silence passed as if he was hesitating. She couldn't see his expression from where she was and didn't even guess it through his voice, which didn't let anything show.
"You should probably look through your things for clues... Maybe other things will come to mind."
He left the room on these words, without even giving the young woman time to respond to him and disappeared, leaving her alone, in silence.
'My stuff...'
She considered his words in silence, without realizing that her eyes were lost in space. She had a vague moment of absence before an image came to her mind. That of a slightly worn cardboard box with edges eaten away by time.
'How could I forget it...'
She had arrived with it at the mansion, from what the family had told her. She had been in this place for over five years, but she had never taken the time to think about it, so much that she only remembered it now that Elvan had mentioned it. Yet this was the only thing that belonged to her, the only object that linked her to her past which escaped her. She felt like she had been hit in the back of the head as if she had just woken up after a long sleep.
'If I remember correctly, it must be...'
She got up and trotted over to her faded wooden desk, where she sometimes worked. She reached into the small drawer stuck under the counter and pulled it towards her, discovering the same small box she remembered now. It was so close to her and in sight of her, but she had never come across it in all these years...
She touched the surface with her palm and rubbed her fingers to remove the dust, before opening it with apprehension, as if something might jump down her throat. The contents of the object, however, seemed very harmless to her: a gold medallion, decorated with a snake biting its tail and a photograph, representing a family whose faces had been colored black, so that they could not be distinguished. Under the latter, she also found a notebook on which the word "Archives" was engraved in capital letters, and which was visibly closed by a padlock decorated with a candle.
'A scribbled photograph, a padlocked notebook, and a pendant that I can't open...'
All this didn't help her much... Elvan had advised her to go through her belongings, but her search didn't seem to be very fruitful... She had found one of her memories and that was a good start, but she wanted to know more...
[Do you want to know...]
The young Désespoir suddenly came back to her mind and the recent events with it.
How could I have forgotten...?!
With the return of one of her memories and Elvan's words, Aina had completely obscured the banquet and the commotion that Désespoir had caused by talking to her about all the things she didn't understand.
'The awakening, the origin, and the vase.'
All this ranting without any apparent meaning had led Aina to remember something, so... Perhaps other bits and pieces would come back to her if went to see her young mistress again.
Her attitude had after all been more than strange. Aina remembered her ramblings which seemed to be nothing, the little mocking and cynical look she wore, as if she knew everything and above all... It was she who had told Aina about the vase.
The object that had turned everything upside down and brought to the surface a part of her past that she had thought was lost.
'But first of all... What is this object doing in Désespoir's room?'
The picture that the child had shown her was identical in every way to the object that the young woman remembered having seen in her memories. Did her family have a trinket like that of the Signavit, which would make this whole situation a mere coincidence, or had Désespoir done it knowingly, because she had answers that Aina did not have?
At that moment, the young woman remembered the little note that had been left under her door.
'Maybe it was her...?'
Perhaps the youngest in the family had wanted to say something to her.
She had no proof of what she was saying and no certainty, but she had the strange feeling that something was wrong with this story, like a dove in a flock of swans.
She talked to her young mistress, she was convinced of it, so she put on a long blue wool coat, before rushing into the corridor, checking that no one was there.
She wasn't doing anything illegal, but it wasn't good for someone to find out that she wanted to question the young child especially not the patriarch. Who knows what he would think to know that she wanted to vent her curiosity to his daughter?
She trotted on tiptoe along the corridor, taking care to check that no one was coming around at each corner of the wall. She felt like she was on a secret mission and the somewhat strange and heavy atmosphere that reigned reminded her of the memory she had dreamed of. At this thought she stopped abruptly and tightened the fabric against her, frowning.
Was it the right thing to do? The memory of fear and dread almost weakened her resolve. She had been curious this time too and it had ended up turning against her... How could she be sure that this situation wouldn't be similar?
When she thought about it, it was rather imprudent to go and question a Signavit, who despite her age, was no less strange than the other members of the family. Who knew what would happen if this was all just a trap or a simple prank...? She was risking a lot by going against one of the family's first rules.
'Don't ask questions.'
Was this tiny and uncertain trail worth it...?
No, she had to be clear about it!
She didn't know why, but something told her that she had to go and meet Désespoir, so she sighed to give herself courage, continuing on her way.
If she didn't take any chances, she would probably never get an answer and she was now sure she wanted to know more about this strange situation.
So, she passed by the storage room, before spying on the living room to make sure that no one was there and that she could take the stairs leading upstairs. Fortunately, she met no one and managed without difficulty to make her way to the east wing, where the youngest children of the family were sleeping.
Her heart thumped against her ribcage as she passed Rage's office before she managed to regain her composure upon arriving at her young mistress's door. She hesitated briefly and knocked a trembling hand against the wood, which resonated strangely more than usual.
Afraid of being surprised by the others, she scanned the corridor from right to left, waiting for the young child to deign to answer her, but she heard nothing.
Not the slightest crack, breath, or sound to indicate that she was there, and yet...
'She must be locked in her room...'
This wasn't normal and she had the vague feeling that something was wrong. She remained stoic, knocking again, before realizing that no one was going to answer her, even if it didn't make any sense. She thought about going back to her room and coming back later, but a strange feeling came over her. In a fit of curiosity – or madness – she turned the handle and pushed the door open, before rushing into the silent room.
At first, she saw only the darkness in which the room was shrouded, due to the almost closed shutters, and then suddenly, a blinding ray of light penetrated through the gap and devoured the entire room.
In response to this, she parted her lips and eyes, before a breath escaped her mouth. Her body shook and her pupils dilated suddenly when she saw that the place, she found herself in was just a vague expanse delimited by four walls.
The room was empty.
Nothing remained of the life that had inhabited it. Not the slightest photo, the slightest piece of furniture, and the slightest dust. Everything was smooth, snag-free, and flawless.
As if no one had ever occupied it.
A shiver ran down her spine when she discovered the absurd and yet terrifying reality that faced her.
"Désespoir's room is gone."