The door clicked behind her, and the familiar hum of her apartment wrapped around her like a warm blanket—comforting, safe. She shrugged off her coat, letting the day fall to the floor.
Earlier, she had carefully examined the tile at the lab, noting its unusual etchings and strange weight, which was probably just in her head. Curiosity had won in the end. She brought it home for one last study, promising herself she wouldn't touch it again.
After her evening meal and basic nightly routine, she slipped into a light blue silk nightgown and sat before the vanity, brushing out her hair.
The tile sat on the table, black and smooth, faint silver veins etched across its surface—shimmering like trapped lightning. It looked harmless in the warm lamplight. Deceptively ordinary.
She should have put it back in its case. Instead, she left it there, beside her watch and a half-forgotten hairpin.
Her fingers itched. She had sworn she wouldn't touch it again. Yet somehow… they found it.
The moment she made contact, the cold surged. Not the gentle chill of stone or earth—this was unnatural, deep, intentional. It coiled up her arm, into her chest, curling around her heart.
Her vision blurred. The hum of her apartment faded, replaced by a heavy, oppressive silence. The room tilted, the walls stretching away as if reality itself were losing its grip. Darkness pressed closer, and she knew—even before it happened—that nothing would ever feel ordinary again.
---
The first thing Aurelia noticed was the smell.
It wasn't smoke. It wasn't fire.
It was iron.
She stood in the middle of a vast hall she did not recognize, marble stretching endlessly beneath her feet. The floor should be white. Instead, it was dark—soaked, sticky, reflective. Blood pooled between the cracks of stone like rainwater that never dried.
Her breath caught.
She didn't know why this place terrified her. She only knew that it did.
There were no bodies. No screams. No sound at all.
Just silence so heavy it pressed against her ears.
She took a step forward. Her foot slipped.
Her heart lurched violently in her chest, and instinctively, she looked down at her hands—half-expecting them to be stained too. They were clean. Untouched. That somehow made it worse.
At the far end of the hall, someone was standing.
A man.
His back was to her.
He was tall, dressed in black robes darkened further by something wet along the sleeves. His shoulders were rigid, as if he had forgotten how to relax them. His hands hung loosely at his sides, fingers slightly curled. Red to the wrist.
Blood.
Not splattered.
Soaked.
As though he had waded through it.
Aurelia felt something twist painfully in her chest.
She didn't know this man.
She knew him.
The certainty came without explanation, without memory. Her knees nearly gave way under the weight of it.
The man took a slow breath. Then another. It sounded wrong—ragged, uneven, like each inhale cost him something he could no longer afford.
"I was late."
His voice was quiet. Not broken. Worse—emptied.
Aurelia tried to speak. She wanted to ask what happened. She wanted to ask who he was. She wanted to ask why the sight of him made her throat burn.
No sound left her mouth.
The man stepped forward, boots sinking slightly into the blood-slick marble. With every step, the hall seemed to darken further, shadows clinging to him as though they were afraid to be left behind.
He stopped before something she hadn't noticed before.
A raised platform.
Charred wood.
Ash scattered across the stone like snow.
Aurelia's vision blurred.
Her chest tightened so suddenly she gasped—and this time, she did make a sound.
The man froze.
Slowly, impossibly slowly, he lowered himself to his knees before the ashes. His hands trembled as he reached out, fingers hovering just above the grey remains, as if touching them would finish what the world had already taken from him.
"I chose the empire," he said, voice barely more than a breath.
The words felt wrong. Heavy. Poisoned.
Aurelia's head throbbed.
Images flickered at the edges of her vision—firelight, screaming heat, a pain so sharp it felt like it might split her in two. She clutched at her chest, her skin prickling as if it remembered something her mind refused to.
"I thought I had time."
His hand closed.
Ash stuck to his palm.
Something inside Aurelia broke.
The hall began to tremble. The blood rippled. The walls seemed to close in, bending inward like they were about to collapse.
The man bowed his head.
For the first time, his shoulders shook.
He whispered a name.
Aurelia never heard it.
The world lurched violently—
—and she woke up gasping, heart hammering, the scent of smoke lingering in her nose, her hands trembling as if they'd just been pulled from fire.
She pressed a shaking palm against her chest.
"I don't know you," she whispered into the dark.
But somewhere deep, deep inside—
something answered back.