Chapter 183 Seraphine
The road didn't just end. It... gave up.
Once moment there was a gravel beneath the tires, uneven but still something recongnizable and then the next, Lucian slowed the 4Runner to a crawl as the path thinned into nothing more than a suggestion of what I imagine people use as a road or a hiking trail of some sorts.
"We're here," he muttered.
The eginged idled but no one moved because the air... the air felt wrong. Not like the forest we had passed through earlier, even though that was hell all rolled into one with those bodies and that thing using them as puppets. This was quieter, but not calm. You can feel it. You can almost taste how wrong it feels.
"I don't like this," Amara said softly, and for once, there was no humor in her voice at all. She was scared.
Dante was already scanning the treeline, his posture rigid, the fire within him coiled just beneath the surface. "Stay close."
"Wasn't planning on skipping off into the woods," Lucian muttered, but even he didn't sound like himself.
As we stepped out, the cold air hit us first. Not temperature wise. It was deeper than that. Like something brushed again my skin and then lingered.... Watching, waiting, measuring, judging.
I swallowed and instinctively stepped closer to Dante. "Do you feel that?" I whispered.
"Yes," he said immediately.
Lucian shut the car door a little harder than neccary. "Yeah, it's called 'we shouldn't be here.'"
"No," I said, shaking my head. "It's.... something else."
And that's when I saw it. Up ahead. The cabin... if you could even call it that. It was small, deceptively so. Bulit from dark aged wood that looked like it been standing long before the trees surrounding it had even grown tall. The roof dipped slightly, uneven in a way that shouldn't have held together all these years but somehow... it did. I noticed there was only two windows and they were dark, not reflective, at least, from the outside.
Amara leaned towards me and whsipered, "Okay, that's definitely haunted."
"Nothing about this is haunted," Lucian muttered.
"That's worse!" She shot back.
The close we got to the cain, the heavier the air felt. Each step, no matter how slow we were, it felt like the ground itself didn't want us there. Like something unseen was pressing down on us, testing how far we'd go.
My head started to throb again and the threads, they were everywhere, but they weren't rotting, not broken, but they were thriving and waiting. Almost like they were watching.
Dant'es hand brushed mine, grounding me a little bit, "You okay?"
"Yeah," I lied, even though my voice came out a little horse, "Just... don't let go."
"Wasn't planning on it."
As we reached the steps, only three of them, we finally noticed that the door to the cabin was already... open. Just slightly, a crack of darkness waiting to welcome us into it's cold empty hands.
Lucian stopped and snickered, "Like that's not ominous at all."
"No," Dante said, "It's not."
Amara crossed her arms and glared at Dante and Lucian right then. "So what's the plan? We knock on the already open door? Or just... announce ourselves to the creepy forest wizard?"
Before anyone else could answer, a voice came from inside. Calm, clear, and almost... annoyingly unimpressed.
"You took your time."
Every single one of us froze.
Dante stepped forward then, positioning himself just slightly in front of me. "Show yourself!"
A pause and then a soft exhale like we were already disappointing this person. "I'm already here."
The door cracked open wider on it's own. No wind, no touch. Just... movement.
Lucian muttered, "Cool. Love that."
Dante didn't wait. he stepped inside and of course, we followed. However, it was the wrong choise because the minute I stepped across the threshold, everything shifted. The pressure, the weight, the feeling of being watched, it intensidified. Not from outside anymore. From inside.
The cabin was larger than it should have been. Much larger. The inside stretched farther than the exterior allowed from the outside, the walled lined with shelves carved into the wood itself, filled with objects that diddn't belong in any normal space. Old scrolls, glass vials filled with shifting shadows, bones etched with symbols that seemed to move if you looked too long.
The air smelled like ash and something older... something ancient.
A fire burned in the hearth, low and steady, casting flickering shadows acrosss the room and in front of it, someone sat. Relaxed, like we weren't intruding on his land or home or anything.
The first thing that hit me was that fact that he looked... normal. Not old, not ancient, not terrifying in the way I expected. He looked human, maybe roughly thirty years old. Dark hair, slightly too long, falling loosely around his face. Sharp features, clean and composed. Dressed simple - black shirt, sleeves rolled up, blue worn out jeans and boots that look like they might have seen better days.
His eyes though... his eyes ruined all of that in a moment. Because they weren't normal. They were deep... far too deep. Like staring into something that had seen far too much and remembered every second of it.
Lucian stopped dead beside me. "... you've got to be kidding me."
Amara blinked. "That's him?"
Danted didn't speak but I felt the shift in him. The tension, how ready he was to kill this man in front of us if need to be.
The man looked at all of us. Disinterest showed on his face until his eyes landed on me. Something softened just slightly which was alaraming.
"Well," he said, leaning back a bit in his chair, one arm resting lazily over the side. "There you are."
My breath caught.
Dante's posture sharpened instantly. "Dont-"
"Relax," The man cit in, his tone flat. "If I wanted her dead, or any of you dead, none of ya'll would have made it past the trees."
Silence followed. Cold. Sharp.
Lucian muttered under his breath, "He's fun."
The man's gaze flickerd to him, instantly annoyed. "Water," He said dryly, "You talk too much."
Lucian blinked. "... okay."
Amara stepped forward slightly, "Wow, rude-"
"I don't like you," he said simply, not even looking at her.
She froze. "...excuse me?"
"I said," he repeated finally glancing at her with clear disinterest, "I don't like you."
Dante let out a quiet breath that sounded suspiciously like a suppressed laugh.
Amara turned to him. "Don't you dare!"
The man ignored all of them completely, turning his attention to me like the others didn't exist at all, like they didn't matter. Maybe, they didn't... to him anyways.
"I felt it," He siad, his voice quieter now, more focused. "The shift."
My heart stuttered. He felt it?
"The realm doesn't change often," he contiuned. "Not like that anyways." His eyes flickered to my shoulder, to my mark. "Fire and... something else."