The hair on his nape prickled as a shiver raked down his spine. The trees stared down at him like looming stone giants watching his every move. The quiet of this place was overwhelming, somehow worse than the deafening sound of a horde of people. The harsh stagnant air masked even the sounds of his own movement through the forest. Garren stuck a finger in his ear, rubbing it back and forth to ensure he hadn’t somehow lost his hearing.
The mythical place was playing tricks on him. As he progressed further, he could have sworn that a few of the trees flickered in the corner of his sight as if they were translucent, disappearing before reappearing in the blink of an eye. He turned sharply, wrinkling his brow when they stood solid before him. He shook his head, blinking rapidly to clear his vision. Was he hallucinating?
He didn’t like it; the feel of this place was wrong. Garren attempted to quicken his pace, but it was as if he were walking through quicksand. He dragged his feet along, rubbing at his eyes as they blurred even more.
He looked up through the tops of the trees and squinted to find the moon peering down at him. How long had he been in the Phantom Wood? Had it been hours already?
It was an utter miracle that the old man had made it out of this place alive. Curse him. Had the man led him into some kind of hell on earth? There was no way he had made it through this place. He had to have been confused, pulling from a story he remembered in the back of his mind and melding it into truth until he believed it to have actually happened to him. Had Garren really traveled all this way on an elderly man’s muddled remembrance? His mind continued to circle on that thought with each halting step. Well, it was too late now, and the way the man had spoken of it had sparked something within Garren, making him take it for truth.
Garren felt himself being pushed further into the forest floor with every stride. He hunched over, sluggish and slow as the pain in his side worsened, and he began to wheeze, unable to pull enough air into his lungs. Was the fog getting thicker?
With a glance back up at the canopy of the evergreens, he found that a shining morning sun was there, just barely peeking its way through the thick trees. Hadn’t it just been evening? Was it a new day already? What was happening? He had to be hallucinating.
Garren’s heart raced, and his entire body shook with trepidation as he grew more desperate for escape. He stumbled over root and stone with every step, vision narrowing and blackness closing in on all sides. A ceaseless ringing began in his ears. It felt as if the forest was sucking the very life from him.
Just as he thought he couldn’t go any further, a bright light shone in the distance. He pulled himself toward it, grabbing onto branches and pushing against tree trunks until he finally saw what looked to be a small clearing up ahead. Brilliant golden light beckoned him forward.
With one last push, he stepped out of the darkness and into the light, adjusting his eyes to find the glowing outline of a woman standing before him. And then the world went black.
8
Oriana
31st day of the Tenth Month, 1774
Sunlight streamed through the canopy of trees, basking Oriana and the world around her in its golden warmth. She bent down to a lush purple flower, brushing her fingers across the delicate petals before breathing in its laden fragrance. Oriana closed her eyes. The scent reminded her of her mother. She had always smelled like violets.
Blowing out a heavy breath, she opened her eyes and headed into her cottage to perch herself upon the small bed in the corner. The woolen blankets dragged on the floor as she pulled them across her shoulders. Hugging her knees tight against her chest, Oriana rested her chin upon them as she let a weary sigh escape her.
It wasn’t often she thought of her family. It had been many years since she had seen any of them. But that small memory of her mother had brought up thoughts of them, specifically of her brother, Orrick.
It had been twenty-five years since her bloodlust had killed. Twenty-five short years since her brother had visited, luring those poor innocent souls into her lair. The fucking bastard, she thought. Her nostrils flared as her lip turned up into a snarl.
Since Oriana had created her enchanted forest, the Phantom Wood, the townsfolk called it; she had learned several things about her curse.
For one, her dark proprium reared its ugly head every full moon, threatening to wreak havoc and taking complete unyielding control of her person. Once in her demon state, her magic could not be used. Not by the monster nor by the light locked within herself–a prisoner forced to watch the horrors unfold at her own hand.
The absence of her magic was jarring. It felt as if an arm had been severed from her body. A piece of her gone, leaving a raw gaping hole in its place.
Luckily, any enchantment already set into motion or solidified when not a creature of death held firm. Meaning her magic was only gone from her person, not the world around her. It also meant that her Phantom Wood did exactly what she had planned it to do. It locked the monster of bloodlust inside, leaving it to circle the forest labyrinth and seek the freedom to feast. Not once had her demon broken free of the forest during the full moon. The blood moon, however, was a different story.
Anthes had given the rise of the blood moon significance within the curse. Every seventy-five years, when that full glowing orb bathed the world in its ruby beams, her forest no longer held her. The monster would break free, heading straight for the closest thrum of life, Sardorf. There was nothing she could do. She had tried everything she could to break free and stop the bloodshed, pushing against the control that the bloodlust had, but it was too strong, and she was too weak. So, she was forced to give up and watch, trying to block out as much of the carnage as she could.
Oriana thought back to the lives she had stolen on the night of her brother’s visit. Their faces forever etched in her mind, mingled with her countless other victims. The youngest of them, the man that she had savagely decapitated, had not been from Sardorf. His fair complexion and frosted blue eyes had her guessing he was from the frozen city of Frosborg, far north over the mountain pass. It didn’t feel like twenty-five years since that night.
With only three short months until the next blood moon, her anxiety and trepidation were high, rising far above the clouds with each dire thought. Without the forest to hold her, how much damage would she cause on that one night? How many would lose their lives?
And there was one slice of understanding clawing at her, trapped in the back of her mind. She knew one thing for sure, one thing that the curse had made very clear. When the power of crimson reigns free ten times, only one can survive and take over the mind. Once the tenth blood moon rose, the monster would be all that was left.
Oriana forced the thoughts from her head, stamping them out as if they were pesky bugs that had snuck under the covers.
Centuries had passed with no change and no inclination as to how she could break free of the curse. She had spent decades trying to find a way out, but it was no use. She had come up short every time. Too many times, she believed she had figured it out–cracked the riddle–but her bloodlust would gain full control once again every full moon. After so many years of fighting, she had come to the tragic conclusion that it was pointless. She couldn’t suppress it. The bloodlust was inevitable.
Tonight was another full moon, which only meant another month had come and gone. And she would spend another month wallowing in self-pity and misery. She was tired, so inexplicably tired.
And so she spent most of her time sequestered in the small cottage on the old barley farm, which had become overgrown with weeds and ivy that snaked its way through the entire farm, invading every corner with its twisting vines. On occasion, she ventured into Sardorf to help Haldis, the village healer. It was her way of trying to give back and help save lives rather than take them. It was her only reprieve for what she had done, but it didn’t truly cancel out the horrors she had committed. It only made her feel a bit better for a fleeting moment, and then the memories, the bloodied faces of her victims, would swim back into her vision like a school of fish swarming around a piece of discarded bread.
Oriana had only gone to help Haldis once in the past month. It was during an unfortunate outbreak of lung fever, a terrible illness that filled the lungs with fluid, effectively drowning a person from the inside. She remembered when the sickness had first come to Sardorf many decades ago. It had wiped out half the village. Some survived, but most died. It had been during the blood moon, fitting that an atrocious sickness would infect Sardorf during the only time when the Phantom Wood could no longer keep her trapped.
