A soft chuckle answered her. Not mocking but patient. As if she were a foolish child with a wild imagination.
“Ah, the mortal man, who sent you away to hide what you are.”The shadows circled her. “To bind what you hold. Yetyou feel it, don’t you?The power stirring beneath your skin. The wrongness of the world when you wake. The way the night listens when you sing. Those were not gifts from your mother, but from me.”
Her fingers curled at her sides. The trees rattled, branches bowing under some unseen force.
“I’m dreaming,” she whispered.
The shadow deepened, and for a fleeting moment she thought she saw the suggestion of an eye within it. Not fully formed, but the impression of something watching her with endless focus.
“Dreams are doors. Some are meant to open.”
Her chest ached. “Why are you here?”
The answer came without hesitation.
“The time draws near for the power in your blood to wake.”
The words sent a shiver through her bones.
“I don’t understand.”
The ground trembled beneath her feet. A low hum filled the air, thrumming through her veins. At her feet, crimson flowers bloomed.
They pushed through the moss, their petals unfurling in slow, deliberate movements, glowing faintly as if lit from within. Blood-red. Luminous. Beautiful in a way that made her breath hitch.
A soft glow radiated from them, warm and alive.
“I’ve seen these before,” Alora whispered.
“The Blood Blooms will surface wherever you bleed, for they are the origin of your seed.”
She trembled at the eerie rhyme.
Her mother used to hear voices in the dark too… before she died.
Alora staggered back, fear crawled up her spine. “It’s only a dream,” she told herself. “Wake up. Wake up.”
“If you wish to wake, then prick your finger.”
A breeze stirred the lilies. Something glinted among them. A large, slender needle lay nestled in the flowers, its shaft dark and polished, the tip gleaming crimson as if already stained.
Alora’s breath caught. “A spindle?”
The forest went utterly still.
“It is a key. One that has waited a long time for your hand.”
“No.” She shook her head violently. “I won’t touch it.”
“You will,”the voice replied, echoing around her. “When the sky bleeds and the curse of your magic fully spreads, I will rise.”
Her vision blurred, her heart pounding. The trees warped. Shadows stretched and twisted, forming shapes too large, too wrong.
She spun in place, searching for escape. “Rune!”
The voice chuckled. “You call the damned for aid?”
Wings tore through the sky, a shape that made the atmosphere recoil in terror.
