She crept through the shadowy ruins, the clammy earth chilling her bare feet. Each step sent a shiver through her. The air reeked of mildew and decay, almost enough to choke her.
With trembling hands, she reached out for the cold, unforgiving stone walls that loomed like sentinels beside her, using them as guides through the oppressive darkness.
"Where am I?" The question coiled in her chest with every step. Part of her wanted to bolt forward. Another part begged her to stay perfectly still, invisible.
Her mind was hazy. Memories slipped away like water through her fingers. New York's bright lights and honking horns felt like a dream she both longed for and distrusted.
Pain throbbed through her skull. She clung to it—it was proof she was awake. Kidnapped? The thought chilled her, yet gave her something solid to believe. Trying to remember only worsened the ache.
She squeezed her eyes shut, forced a breath, and pushed the chaos aside. Survival. That was all that mattered. Danger lurked in these ruins—the same force that had dragged her here.
As the cold wind whipped around her, urging her forward through the desolate ruins, a flicker of moonlight revealed her surroundings: the remnants of an ancient castle, its once-majestic stones now cloaked in the passage of time.
Castle ruins. The thought sent a chill through her—ancient stones that predated her entire country. Nothing like this existed in New York.
"Am I in a different country?" she pondered, a thrill of anxiety racing through her veins as possibilities swirled in her mind. Swallowing her apprehension, she pressed onward, adrenaline building within her.
The unfamiliar sights and sounds heightened her senses, sending the hairs on the back of her neck standing on end. The air was thick and sticky against her skin, a sensation that felt almost sentient, wrapping around her like an embrace that was both suffocating and alluring.
Natalia had encountered humidity numerous times, but this was a different beast altogether. The air seemed to press down on her like an invisible cloak of melancholy, wrapping around her petite frame and turning every step into a determined act of rebellion.
Each inhale felt like drawing in a storm, the air charged with a palpable electricity, as though the ancient stones of the castle exhaled alongside her.
Her heart pounded in her chest, a rapid drumbeat of fear echoing through her body, yet she forced herself to move forward on trembling legs. Her footsteps barely made a sound on the icy stone floor, a soft shuffle that testified to her trepidation.
As she crossed the threshold into a dimly lit chamber, the shadows swallowed her breath, leaving it suspended in the cool, dense air.
Shards of glass from a shattered window lay scattered like fallen stars, the splintered moonlight casting jagged, ghostly patterns across the dusty floor. Particles of dust danced madly in the beams.
Pressed against the wall, her chest rose and fell with ragged breaths as her eyes darted around the room, searching desperately for anything—a weapon, a hidden exit, a chance at survival for just five more minutes.
"You can't lose your fucking mind yet, Natalia," she whispered, then immediately regretted making any sound at all. Her voice skittered across the cold, damp stone walls like something alive and hunted.
She pressed her fingernails into her palms, caught between the terror of being discovered and the maddening need to hear something—anything—human in this place, even if it was only herself.
She crouched, the stone was slick, leaving a dark residue on her skin, which she wiped on her jeans. She scanned the chamber's corners, glancing up only when certain nothing threatened from above.
Her gaze found the ceiling and halted: a spiderweb, stretched thickly across the rotting beam, shimmered wetly in the moonlight. Something had torn through it recently, leaving a ragged hole at its center.
Natalia's scalp prickled. She traced the ragged tear in the web with her eyes, measuring its size. Too large for a moth. Too deliberate for a bird. Something had pushed through recently—the edges still glistened with moisture.
Her mind flashed to subway rats, their sleek bodies squeezing through impossible spaces. Rats would be fine. Familiar. But the tear angled downward, as if whatever made it had descended from above, hunting.
She swallowed hard, suddenly aware of how alone she was, how the silence seemed to listen for her movements.
Forcing herself to focus, to think. If she could reach the window, perhaps she could see where she was. Perhaps someone—anyone—might be out there. Even the thought of police or an ambulance, strangers with bright lights and handcuffs.
Glass crunched faintly beneath her heel, and she winced, half-expecting some spectral force to come screeching in response. But nothing came, only the thickening quiet, so dense it felt like a physical pressure behind her eardrums.
Natalia gritted her teeth and knelt, picking up the largest shard of glass she could find—a makeshift weapon if nothing else. The glass was cold and slick, biting into her palm with a promise of blood should she grip it too tightly. She gripped it anyway.
Natalia pressed her face to the stone window frame. Beyond lay a monstrous forest, twisted trees clawing at the night sky like hands from graves.
A bloated moon hung wrong in the sky, its sickening light revealing no sirens, no flashlights—nothing human at all.
The unnatural brightness carved every leaf and branch into knife-edge focus. When she tilted her head upward, her breath caught in her throat.
The stars—Christ, the stars—they weren't hers. These savage pinpricks of light swarmed across the sky in violent clusters, pulsing and writhing in patterns that hurt her eyes to follow.
The Big Dipper, Orion's Belt—all the celestial anchors of her world had been ripped away, replaced by this maddening, alien geometry that seemed to watch her.
A shudder rippled through her. Dreaming? Drugged? Abducted to some unmapped realm? Her nails scraped her scalp as if to claw out answers, finding none. If it was a hallucination, it mocked her with its cruel authenticity.
She pressed her palm flat against the cold, rough surface of the stone wall, feeling each crevice and grain beneath her fingertips, grounding herself in its tactile certainty. Despite the anxiety crawling under her skin like an unwelcome visitor.
Focus, she told herself, squeezing her eyes shut for a moment. Survive, she urged herself, her hand steadying on the wall as she opened her eyes to face the uncertain path ahead.
But just as she began to gather her thoughts, the silence was shattered—an unexpected sound broke through the oppressive stillness of the room.
A deep, resonant whoosh of massive wings sliced through the air overhead, sending icy shivers racing down her spine like the touch of a ghost.
She froze in shadow, debris at her feet threatening to betray her position. Her eyes strained against the darkness, hunting for movement.
The ground trembled beneath her feet, a menacing herald of something far more terrifying looming just beyond her sight. Her heart lurched violently. "Fuck, what was that?" she thought, forcing herself deeper into the icy stone walls, as if they might swallow her whole and offer a sliver of safety, while the oppressive air seemed to crush her from all sides.
In the distance, an ominous figure stalked closer, the sound of cracking branches breaking the quietness of the night as it edged toward Natalia's hiding place, its presence heavy and ominous. A shadow passed by the doorframe, a dark silhouette that made her hold her breath, her heart pounding violently in her ears like a war drum.
Despite her fervent wish that this was nothing more than a fevered nightmare, the palpable fear enveloping her felt agonizingly real. "Please, let me wake up," she pleaded silently into the stillness as tears streamed down her face, the salt mixing with the sweat of her panic. Frantically, she considered her options; could she leap through the window and flee into the unknown depths of the forest? No the fall alone would break her legs. She was trapped.
The unknown figure's footsteps were nearly silent, yet each step struck the ground with a foreboding intensity, reverberating through the oppressive silence as he advanced with deliberate menace before entering her chamber, the spring trap closing shut.
Violet eyes pierced her as the figure moved fluidly beneath the jagged hole in the ceiling, where the moonlight dared to intrude, casting an ethereal, ghostly luminescence over his form.
Natalia shook, glass shard raised defensively, her entire body coiled and ready.
As he drew nearer, her heart pounded violently against her ribs like a frantic bird trapped in a cage, desperate to escape.
She could now distinguish more details; he was undeniably a man, towering and formidable, with a gaze that bore into her soul, amplifying the frantic, rabbit-like rhythm of her heartbeat.
His skin was a chillingly pale canvas, flawlessly smooth yet devoid of any warmth, a stark contrast that made him all the more unnervingly intimidating.
He took another step. The floor vibrated beneath her feet. "Mortal." The word sliced through the air, so low she felt it in her chest before her ears. Behind him, something shifted in the darkness—a massive shadow detaching from his shoulders, unfurling outward like midnight sails catching wind.
Black feathers scraped against stone walls.
Natalia's mouth opened but produced no sound. "What the fuck," was the only thing she could think as her eyes tracked the impossible wingspan stretching across the chamber.
Her knees buckled slightly causing the glass shard to slip from her fingers and shattered against the floor. She stumbled backward toward the window, the cold night air at her back, but her muscles had turned to stone.
Tilting his head slightly, he extending a large hand toward her. Instinctively, she recoiled, pressing her back against the cold, wall behind her. A smirk curled at the corners of his lips, a predatory expression that suggested he relished the power he held over her in this taut standoff. As his eyes raked over her figure, a wave of vulnerability washed over her.
He was beautiful in a way that terrified her—tall, sleek black hair tied back, wings unfurling behind him like a dark crown.
His beauty terrified her—a predator's grace in every movement. Her instincts screamed danger while something deeper pulled her toward him, leaving her frozen between flight and fascination.
Summoning every ounce of courage in the face of this menacing creature, she demanded, "Did you kidnap me?" Her voice, though quiet, carried a sharp edge, barely concealing a tempest of fear mixed with defiance.
The stranger scrutinized her with an unnerving intensity, his eyes cold and unreadable, pinning her in place like an insect under a magnifying glass. "Did you?" she shouted, her voice climbing with desperation.
"No," he answered, his tone a velvet whisper that slithered through the air as he advanced toward her. With deliberate precision, he grabbed a loose strand of her dark brown hair. The heat of his presence was palpable, an overwhelming force that both repelled and drew her closer.
Her body tensed to flee even as her mind urged her to lean in, to understand what impossible thing stood before her. "He has wings," she thought, her terror mingling with a forbidden fascination that made her hate herself, "yet his touch feels so human."
His lips curled upward at one corner as he released her hair, his fingers trailing away like smoke. He took half a step back. The air between them seemed to crackle, and goosebumps erupted along her arms where his heat had been seconds before.
Natalia's lungs struggled against her ribs as if they'd forgotten how to work properly. She opened her mouth, questions crowding behind her teeth, but his violet eyes had turned to stone, his jaw set in a way that made the words die in her throat.
As the heavy atmosphere thickened around them, she braced herself for the impending storm. A realization washed over her—the shifting tides of fate hinted that this was merely the beginning.
Her heart raced as she sensed the fragile edges of her reality being tested, the very fabric of her sanity and resolve threatening to unravel in the wake of what was to come.
"Pretty," his raspy voice sliced through the suffocating air like a blade. Her eyes were trapped in his gaze. "What is your name, mortal?" His deep timbre reverberated within her chest like a rolling thunder.
"Natalia Iverson," she whispered, the words slipping from her lips unbidden, as if she had no command over her own voice. He merely nodded, and then he was upon her with terrifying speed.
The last image seared into her mind was his cruel smirk before her skull cracked against the unforgiving stone wall. Agony exploded through her body as darkness enveloped her world.