Chapter 7: A Nightmare

I was running.

Bare feet slapped against wet earth, mud, and blood slick beneath me, the forest closing in from all sides. Branches clawed at my skin like living things, thorns tearing into my arms, my legs and my throat. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t stop. The air was so thick with metallic stench of blood and something darker and rotten.

I didn’t know what I was running from.

I only knew that if it caught me, I would not survive it.

The darkness behind me shifted and pulsed in shadows stretching unnaturally long and writhing, swallowing the trees whole, I could hear my own heartbeat pounding in my ears, so frantically, as if it were trying to escape my chest.

Faster.

I had to run faster.

A scream tore out of me when the ground beneath my feet gave way, the ground cracking open. Too many hands shot up from the darkness, wrapping around my ankles, my wrists, dragging me down.

“No!”

The hands tightened.

Their grip was icy, skin slick as fingers dug into my flesh, claiming me and peeling me apart layer by layer. I kicked and thrashed, my nails clawing at the mud but it gave me nothing to hold onto.

It was pulling me down.

Down into a darkness that felt alive and breathing.

I caught a glimpse of faces, half-formed and twisted as their mouths curved. Their eyes were hollow pits, leaking black tears streaming down their pale cheeks and vanished into the void beneath us.

There was a strange kind of terrifying familiarity to them.

“Help me,” one of them mouthed.

My chest seized.

The shadows surged forward, but I was too scared to even comprehend anything. I needed to run, to get out of here.

I could taste iron, could feel something warm trickling down my neck.

Looking down at my hands, I found blood.

A low growl rolled through the forest so feral my head snapped at the sound with wide eyes. The hands loosened just as something else emerged from the darkness. Something taller and bigger.

My eyes widened and I crawled back.

Its silhouette towered over me, its form shifting, never settling into anything human. Eyes glowed faintly within the black mass, watching me with patience that was far more horrifying than hunger.

I tried to scream again, but my voice failed. My mouth opened, but only silence came out. The thing stepped closer, and with every step, I died a little more.

I flinched as its hand reached me. It brushed my cheek and suddenly the forest was gone.

I was five again.

Small and barefoot, standing in a narrow hallway that smelled of home.

A door creaked open at the end.

I knew what was behind it.

I didn’t want to go, but my legs moved anyway.

“Run,” a voice whispered in my ear.

It sounded like my own.

The door slammed shut as I heard familiar cries from inside.

“She’s our daughter, Steve!” That was my mama’s voice. I walked closer and closer till the vices started fading. Terror that I was left alone again engulfed me and I panicked.

“No, no, no! Mama!” I called out for her but the door kept moving away.

“Mama!” I called out again but everything started collapsing. Terror filled my chest as I ran. And ran. Till I was falling, and falling.

“MAMA!”

I jolted upright with a scream lodged into my throat.

My chest heaved violently as I clawed at the sheets, my body drenched in sweat, hair plastered to my face, heart hammering so loudly I could hear it.

My eyes snapped open as the beige shadowed ceiling came into view.

I raised my hand and swallowed when I found nothing. There was no blood. I looked around again, taking in the surroundings and suddenly recalling that I was in somewhere else rather than the brothel.

It was just a dream.

Just a damned nightmare.

I pressed a trembling hand to my chest, forcing myself to breathe. In. Out. In. out.

The sheets beneath me were drenched with sweat, clinging to my skin like a second layer, and for a moment I couldn't tell if I was still in the nightmare or had escaped it.

I sat up slowly, my legs trembling as adrenaline coursed through my veins. The room around me seemed to pulse with an eerie darkness, shadows dancing at the edges of my vision. I reached out toward the window, my fingers brushing against the cold glass pane.

I could feel the night air seeping through the crack I’d forgotten to close earlier.

Carefully, almost reverently, I grabbed the edge of the window and pushed it open wider. A strange, silvery wisp of fog drifted across the opening, swirling and twisting as if it had a mind of its own. My eyes narrowed as I stared into the darkness beyond, where the forest pressed close to the house.

That’s when I heard the howls of the wolves. My blood ran cold. I heard my own voice calling out in the dream, saw shadows moving through the trees.

I swallowed hard.

Why did I suddenly had that dream again? After so long? I thought it was gone. Why did it return?

"Mom?”

"Mom, where are you?"

I shut my eyes, drawing out the voices in my head.

They were not real.

I stumbled backward, my head spinning as I slammed the window shut with more force than necessary. The latch clicked into place and I threw myself back onto the bed, pulling the sheets up over my body. My hands were shaking, and I pressed them against my mouth, trying to stop the tears that threatened to spill over.

Why? Why had that dream come back now, after so long? The last time I’d  had it, I’d been younger, still processing the chaos of my early years. That night, I’d lost someone. Someone important. But who?

I squeezed my eyes shut, trying to push the memories away, but they came anyway, fragments of a childhood I barely remembered. My parents, dead before I was even old enough to understand loss. The aunt who’d taken me in at five. Who’d loved me fiercely before illness took her too. The man who’d “saved” me at five, groomed me, who’d promised to give me a home, a family and a future.

A future that had turned into something far more complicated than I’d ever imagined.

My breath came in short, shallow gasps as I lay there, the weight of everything pressing down on my chest. Azran. His touch, his words, the way he’d looked at me like I was something worth saving, buying, and taken care of. The way my body had responded to him, even as my mind screamed warnings.

I was a stranger to myself now, caught between two different people. Two brothers. It was terrifying, exhilarating and completely insane.

With a soft whimper, I rolled over and buried my face in the pillow, muffling the sound of my tears. My heart felt heavy, leaden, as if it might sink through the mattress and down. I thought of my mother, though it had been so long since I last thought of her, but today, suddenly I missed her more.

The woman who’d held me when I was scared, who’d promised to always protect me.

I love you, Mama. I love you so much. I wish you were here.

But she wasn’t here. She hadn’t been here for years. And I was alone in this house and world, with a man who made me feel things I didn’t understand who looked at me like I belonged to him.

I told myself I should be afraid, that every instinct should be screaming at me to run, to find a way out, to never look back. But instead, I felt restless, my body still humming with the memory of his touch, the sound of his velvety rough voice, the way he’d backed me against the wall and made me feel small and safe all at once.

It was wrong. All of it was wrong. I was a stranger, barely twenty one, and I was already drowning in complications I didn't understand. The dream had returned after years, bringing with it memories of loss and pain, of people I’d loved who were gone. And now, lying here in the darkness, I realized that the dream wasn't just about the past.

It was a warning. A warning that I was about to lose someone else, or worse, lose herself entirely to the darkness that Azran represented.

I knew it, cause I was a curse. An abomination. Everyone die because of me.