"Hell, no! I'm not following some ghost to a place I don't know!" I yelled at her.
She nearly almost frowned, "I'm not some ghost, Ashen. My name is Serena. And I would appreciate it if you made my job a little bit easier and stop trying to attack me and actually followed instructions!" her voice was calm but frustration laced in her every word .
Damn.
She repeated, "Follow me."
Her voice was no longer a whisper.
My legs shook with coiled exhaustion in the muscles, yet curiosity was a beast at my heels, pushing me forward. I quietly followed her
Then, as fate would have it…
I tripped over an exposed root, sprawling face-first into the cold earth. The taste of dirt filled my mouth, gritty and metallic. For a moment, I just lay there, chest heaving against the ground, the pounding of my heart echoing in my ears.
I rolled onto my back, staring up through the jagged canopy where the sky bled into streaks of crimson and violet. I heard a laugh.
Serena stood a few paces ahead of me. She tilted her head in that way of hers—like she was studying me, peeling me apart layer by layer. It made my skin crawl.
I clenched my fists. "I'm done playing whatever game this is." My voice came out rough, edged with the frustration boiling under my skin. "What are you?"
Serena blinked, slow, almost thoughtful. "Does it matter?"
I took a step forward. "It does if you keep following me. If you know things about me that I don't." My jaw tightened. "I want answers."
She sighed, tilting her head up toward the sky—or what passed for a sky in this place. For a moment, I thought she might ignore me. Then, finally, she spoke. "You're not ready for all the answers."
"That's not your decision to make."
Her lips curled at the edges, a ghost of amusement. "But it is."
I gritted my teeth. "You're not real."
"Wrong." She took a step toward me this time, her gaze sharp, unblinking. "I am very real, Ashen. I'm just not like you."
I didn't back away, though every instinct screamed at me to. "Then what are you?"
She was silent for a long moment. Then—
"I wasn't meant to exist."
Those words sent a strange chill down my spine.
"And what the hell does that mean?"
She exhaled softly, like the question exhausted her. "I was never supposed to be here. But something unnatural holds me in this world. I don't eat. I don't sleep. I don't breathe the way you do. And yet, I remain."
My mind reeled, the weight of her words pressing into me. "Then why are you here?"
Her glowing eyes darkened slightly. "Because of you."
A sharp, cold weight settled in my chest. I shook my head. "No. That's not possible."
"Isn't it?" She took another step closer, and I didn't move away this time. "Do you think it was a coincidence that I found you? That I know things about you no one else does?"
I swallowed hard, my throat dry. "What do you mean?"
Serena studied me for a moment before finally saying, "Your curse. It reacted to me."
There was a pregnant silence between us, charged with something unseen. I struggled to breathe through it. "You're saying… you're connected to this? To whatever the hell is happening to me?"
Her expression didn't change. "Yes."
A cold fury settled in my gut. "Then tell me why."
For the first time, her gaze flickered, almost hesitant. "Because you messed with something beyond your control, Ashen. You tired to control the darkness and for that you are not meant to exist anymore. "
The words slammed into me like a physical force. My pulse roared in my ears. "What?"
"You were meant to die, Ashen. The shadow- death touched you."
I held my breath. The ground beneath me seemed to sway, the pulsing heartbeat of the earth growing louder. I shook my head again, trying to force the words away. "That's not—"
"It is." Serena's voice was quiet, but unshakable. "Something changed. Something kept you alive. And now… the world is trying to correct that mistake."
My stomach twisted. My mind rebelled against the idea. I had survived. I had fought. I had endured. I was alive because I refused to die, because I clawed my way through every goddamn thing thrown at me. Not because of some cosmic mistake.
I took a step back, shaking my head. "You're lying."
"I don't lie." Serena's voice was calm, but there was something else now—something closer to sadness. "The things hunting you? They aren't after you because of what you are. They're after you because you shouldn't be at all."
Silence stretched between us, thick and suffocating. My heartbeat was erratic, my breath shallow.
I clenched my fists again. "Then what am I supposed to do? How can I fix this?"
Serena held my gaze. "As I said, follow me."
I hesitated.
"Don't you trust me?"
Every fiber of my being told me not to trust her. But I had no other answers. And the alternative—accepting that I was a mistake, a walking error in the fabric of reality—was something I wasn't ready for.
So, against every instinct screaming at me to run, I took a step forward.
Serena didn't bother to wait for my answer. Instead, she turned, walking through the ruins with an eerie, effortless grace, like the ground bent to her will. Her silence was a challenge, and I wasn't about to let her dictate the rules of this twisted game.
"Where are you taking me?" I demanded, my voice rough from the cold air scraping my throat.
"Somewhere you need to see," she said simply, glancing back at me. "If you want answers, follow. If not, stay and rot."
I clenched my jaw. Every part of me screamed not to trust her, but the whispers—the ruins, the way they moved and breathed—made it clear that staying wasn't an option either. So, I followed. We went back into the ruins.
The ruins stretched further than I thought, twisted corridors and archways forming a labyrinth that shouldn't have existed. The air grew colder, denser, and charged with something unseen. The ivy-covered walls pulsed faintly, like veins carrying something beneath the surface. I told myself it was just a trick of the light, but I knew better.
Serena led me to a clearing where the stone gave way to something else—an altar. It was old, older than anything I'd ever seen, its surface carved with symbols that pulsed dimly, veins of crimson light threading through the cracks. The sight of it made my skin crawl.
"What is this?" I asked, stepping closer. The ground beneath my feet felt wrong—too smooth, too unnatural, like walking on glass that could crack at any moment.
Serena tilted her head. "A memory. A scar. Call it whatever you want."
"That's not an answer."
She sighed, stepping onto the altar without hesitation. The moment she did, the air shifted. The ruins flickered, like a glitch in reality. And then—
Everything shattered.
The world around us fractured. The ruins distorted, stretching and folding like they were being unraveled from the inside out. Shadows moved where there shouldn't have been any. And the whispers… they didn't just come from the walls anymore. They came from the air itself.
I turned sharply, my instincts screaming. My reflection stood behind me—but it wasn't me. Its eyes were hollow, its form slightly blurred, like a memory half-forgotten. And then it grinned, sharp and wrong.
"What the hell is this place?" I growled, my claws flexing.
"The space between," Serena murmured, watching me with an unreadable expression. "A crack in what should be. A place where the past still breathes."
The whispers turned into voices. Echoes of things that didn't belong to me. I heard laughter, then screams, then something worse—pleading. A voice too close to my own begging for something I couldn't understand. My head throbbed, my vision doubling as the shadows writhed.
"Make it stop!" I snarled.
Serena didn't flinch. "You want to know how to fix this? Then listen."
The voices swelled, deafening. The altar beneath us pulsed, and suddenly, the mirror realm around us shifted again. For a brief moment, I saw something—someone. A figure standing on the altar, their arms outstretched, bound by chains made of light. They screamed, their face flickering, unrecognizable.
Then, darkness swallowed them whole.
My breath came fast and ragged. "What was that?"
Serena's gaze was unreadable, but something in her posture changed—just for a second. "A glimpse. A fragment of what was lost."
I stepped closer to her, barely keeping my rage in check. "And what does it have to do with me? With you?"
She met my eyes then, and for the first time, something flickered in their unnatural glow. A truth she wasn't sure I was ready to hear.
"I am what came before you," she whispered. "And what comes after. And you..."
The words hit like a blade to the gut. "Something is going to happen- I need you not to panic," Serena told me with an urgency in her voice.
"What? No. Don't let it happen," I was pleading.
"That's not my choice to make," she said, her voice and her, herself slowly fading into nothingness.
Great! Just great!
Stone walls loomed around me, etched with symbols that pulsed faintly, their glow like dying embers. The floor beneath me was smooth, almost glass-like, reflecting distorted fragments of my face. Torches flickered along the walls, their flames unnervingly still, casting shadows that danced without rhythm.
I wasn't alone.
A figure stood at the far end of the room, cloaked in darkness. Not Serena. Heavier, more ancient. It leaned into my chest, as if with invisible hands.
"Ashen," the voice whispered, yet it echoed, rippling along the stone walls like a tremor.
I swallowed hard and forced myself to stand straight. "Who are you? Where am I? What happened to Serena?"
He stepped forward and the flickering light showed me a face partially hidden by a hood. Eyes like molten gold stared at me, ancient and knowing.
"You carry the mark," he murmured, cocking his head to one side as if to consider something that only he could see. "The curse runs deeper than you know."
I took a shaky step backward, clenching my fists. "I'm done with riddles. If you know something, tell me."
The figure chuckled low, dry as ash. "Truth isn't given freely, cursed one. It must be earned."
Without warning, the ground buckled beneath me, and the symbols flared bright crimson. A circle of light ensnared me, pulsed in rhythm with my heartbeat. Pain surged through my veins, sharp and electric, dumping me onto my knees.
I clenched my teeth and didn't scream. This was not the crone's curse. The pain of this was seeking, peeling layers off me to get to some hidden truth.
"What do you want from me?" I seethed and fought to my feet.
He stepped closer now, fully in the light. His face was ageless, his features sharp and symmetrical, inhumanly perfect. "Not what I want. But what you are looking for."
Images flashed through my mind—Serena's face, shadows in the woods, blood-smearing memories that I couldn't place. It felt as though my head was going to explode.
Then it stopped.
The circle disappeared, and the figure was gone. I was again alone, panting on the cold floor, sweat dripping off my brow.
But something had changed. There was now an intricate, burning symbol on my forearm, soft and pulsating with golden light.
Before I could understand, the walls around me exploded, dissolving into mist. I fell again, and darkness swallowed me.
I jolted awake, back in the forest, the damp earth cool against my skin. But I wasn't the same.
Serena was standing a few feet away, silent, staring at me without expression.
I don't know if I was happy to see her…or if I wanted to lunge at her for giving me the billionth heart attack today.