"Look at her!" A distorted voice said "Just look at her!"
"Disgusting..." Someone said in a hushed voice dripping with hate.
The voices in Raven's nightmare grew louder, a twisted echo of her childhood memories. She stood in the middle of her old village, small and frightened, her black hair standing out like a shadow against the tones of her kin. The villagers surrounded her, their eyes wide with fear and contempt. Even as a child, she could sense the hate simmering behind their words, though she never truly understood why.
"She is different" one villager whispered harshly, the words cutting through the air like a blade.
"She shouldn't have been born" another hissed, the crowd slowly closing in, their faces twisted with disgust.
"It's a stain on our kin!" someone shouted from the back, and suddenly, the whispers became a chorus of hateful murmurs.
"Her mother's fault... bringing a cursed child into our world"
"Cursed... cursed..." The word echoed, bouncing around her like an endless chant. Raven's heart pounded, her small hands trembling as she tried to make herself smaller, but there was no escape. She remembered this feeling all too well...the suffocating isolation, the rejection.
In the dream, her mother was there, standing at the edge of the crowd, silent and distant. Her face was pale, eyes downcast, never meeting Raven's. The girl's breath quickened as she reached out for her, but her mother stepped back. Her expression. Her goddamn expression. The sheer terror in her face.
"Mom?" young Raven called out, her voice cracking with desperation.
But her mother said nothing. The woman's back was to the crowd, but her terror was clear in the way she stood, her body tense, shaking slightly. She was shielding Raven out of love... but love doesn't do shit if you are not strong enough to wield it. Raven could see it now, even as a child.
"I..." her mother finally spoke, her voice faint, barely audible over the crowd. She took a deep, shaky breath, her hands gripping the fabric of her dress. "She's just a child..."
"An abomination"
"A creature from darkness..."
The crowd murmured in agreement, their voices blending into a hateful symphony. Raven's heart pounded harder, her small body frozen in place. She wanted to scream, to shout that it wasn't her fault, that she didn't ask to be born this way. But the words wouldn't come. She was trapped in her own silence, just like her mother.
...
...
...
Then everything got loud. She could hear the laughs. She could hear them cheering. She could hear her mother's screams. The fire cracking. The house was burning. Everything was hot, very hot. A terrifying image engraved in her mind manifested in front of her eyes...
"!!!"
Raven got up so fast as if her life depended on it, her hand clutching the dagger tightly, its cold blade reflecting her face, her stupid face rolling with tears. She wiped away the last of her tears, forcing her breath to steady as she tried to shake the remnants of the nightmare. Her past always crept up on her in moments like this, when she was about to face something dangerous, the first time she didn't have this problem... it had been a good time since it last happened, but now that she got her ass kicked last time she tried now she had this linger of fear towards the dungeon now.
"It seems I didn't drink enough booze yesterday" She said lamenting not getting wasted enough, then she hit her cheeks with both of her hands "So... today is the day"