Chapter 2: Awakening in Darkness
The darkness wasn't empty.
It whispered.
It writhed like a living thing, coiling around Aria's thoughts, brushing against memories that weren't hers. A forest burning. Screams swallowed by flame. Silver eyes. A hand outstretched, then snatched away.
She blinked awake with a gasp.
The attic room tilted sideways before steadying. Her throat burned with the phantom taste of smoke. Her heart thundered like a war drum beneath her ribs. Cold sweat soaked her nightgown, and the thin sheet clung to her like a second skin.
"Breathe, Aria," she whispered to herself. "It's just a dream."
But the words didn't soothe. They never did.
She swung her legs over the edge of the bed. The creaky floor groaned under her weight. Pale blue dawn spilled in through the attic window, chasing shadows into corners. Below, the farm stirred the rustle of chickens, the first grunt of cows, the distant bleat of a restless lamb.
Everything normal. Mundane.
Except her.
Aria Winters had never felt normal.
Ever since she could remember, the dreams plagued her. Not always of fire sometimes wolves, sometimes blades, sometimes a voice calling her name in a language she didn't understand.
She padded toward the mirror.
The pendant. Her fingers brushed the warm metal, still glowing faintly red as if it had soaked up fire from her dream.
It had no clasp. It had never been taken off since the night she was found an orphan, wrapped in burnt silk, on the doorstep of the Nightfall Orphanage.
Seventeen years ago.
"Aria!"
Mrs. Havens' voice thundered from below. The sound of a wooden spoon smacking the side of a pot followed.
Aria sighed and pulled on her boots. "Coming!"
The pendant flared once, then dimmed.
The dirt path down to the barn was slick with dew. Aria worked in silence, milking goats and feeding hens while Havens hummed hymns that grated like rusted metal. The woman had always been cold, but lately she had grown meaner, her whispers tinged with fear whenever Aria entered a room.
It started when Aria turned seventeen.
When strange things began happening.
Her breath freezing in summer. Her shadow moving when she stood still. A boy named Thorne grabbing her wrist too hard and ending up with a dislocated shoulder, even though she hadn't touched him.
Whispers followed her like a scent.
Witch. Cursed. Demon-blood.
She shrugged them off.
Mostly.
But something inside her had begun to stir.
Something vast.
By midday, Aria was walking toward the village. She had finished early an excuse to get away, to breathe. The pendant hummed against her chest, growing warmer with each step.
The village of Hollowmere was small, surrounded by thick woods and rumor. No one left. No one came.
Except for today.
A black carriage stood outside the apothecary, drawn by two midnight steeds that didn't paw or breathe like normal horses. A sigil glowed on the door a crescent moon split by a single flame.
The moment Aria saw it, her heart skipped.
Her legs moved before her brain caught up. She pressed behind a stack of barrels across the street, heart hammering.
The door opened.
A man stepped out.
Tall. Broad-shouldered. Pale as snow. His long coat swept the cobblestones like shadow incarnate, and his boots made no sound.
But it was his eyes that locked her.
Silver.
The same eyes from her dreams.
The same eyes from the fire.
Her breath caught. She shrank back instinctively, but the man's head snapped toward her. He looked right at her.
Her vision swam.
Memories that weren't hers flashed his face, younger, laughing. His hand in hers. His mouth against her throat. The dart.
Pain.
Aria stumbled back.
The man didn't pursue. He looked away, spoke something to the apothecary, and returned to the carriage. It rolled away in silence.
Only after it vanished around the bend did Aria realize she was trembling.
Something was happening.
She had seen him. And he had seen her.
That night, the dreams returned.
But this time… she didn't burn.
She walked through the flames.
The Temple was gone, but her feet knew the path. Her white gown shimmered like moonlight. She heard chanting. She saw her sisters dancing, laughing. She saw a man kneeling Lucian.
Not the monster from the forest. Not the killer.
This Lucian smiled. This Lucian held her as if she were his whole world.
His voice reached her like smoke.
"My flame."
She woke up crying.
The next morning, a letter arrived.
No one had sent her a letter in her life.
There was no name. Just her own scrawled in calligraphy on thick parchment. Inside: a single invitation.
Aria Winters,
You are cordially invited to the Moonstone Academy of Arcane Arts.
Your presence is requested. Transport shall arrive tomorrow at dusk.
Burn brightly.
There was no seal. No return address.
Mrs. Havens tried to burn the letter.
The flames recoiled.
At dusk, the black carriage returned.
The same horses. The same insignia. A figure stood beside it. A woman this time, tall and severe, with hair braided in steel ribbons and eyes like carved glass.
"You're not safe here," she said. "You're Awakening. They'll come for you."
Aria glanced back once at the orphanage, at the only life she'd ever known.
Then she stepped into the carriage.
The door closed.
The wheels turned.
And far away, in the obsidian fortress beyond the Blood Mountains, Lucian Blackthorn stood on a balcony, gazing into a silver basin.
She was coming.
He turned to Corvin, eyes fierce.
"Prepare the court. Our queen returns."