I felt it before I was fully awake: in my head, as if a flock of the thinnest needles sharp and icy were pressing inward, slowly and precisely, as though someone were trying to pierce through the flesh of my mind.
The pain throbbed, swelled, like a muffled knell, like a restrained scream with no escape. I could not shake it off, could not forget it.
And suddenly, a sharp jerk. Everything collapsed.
I shuddered, as if I had returned to my body after a long absence, inhaled too quickly, my eyes flew open and the light pierced my sight.
I was sitting. My hands, clutching the back of my head, tried to hold together my scattering thoughts. My heart was beating as though it were catching up to its own rhythm. The world around me stood still, as if time had stopped.
I slowly raised my head. My chest still caught at the air. There was a ringing in my head, as if the emptiness inside my skull were echoing something forgotten.
But the world had already returned. Quiet. Wordless. It simply was.
I looked around.
There were three people in the room.
By the door stood that girl. The one I had pushed away. Young, with a headscarf, just the same, restrained, neat. But now her gaze was different. Not surprised. Rather… studying. Silently observing.
Next to her—him. The chestnut knight. The one who had covered me with cloth. Who had not grabbed me when he could. Who had simply walked and had not let me forget the sound of his steps.
He looked at me seriously, not cruelly, but as though in my suffering he sought an answer. Not a word. Only his eyes, like a tree in the evening light. Dark. Warm. Heavy.
And another. A man in a grey robe. Middle-aged. His face was quiet, as though he knew too much and had accepted too much.
All three stood together. As if they had just broken off a conversation. As if my moan had cut through their words. And now, they were simply looking. Looking at me returning to my body. At my torment. At my waking.
No one approached. No one uttered a sound.
And that made it even quieter.
He spoke again. The chestnut one.
The one who had appeared in my flight, had been the obstacle, and now spoke to me with words that sounded like wind between stones.
I understood not a single word.
He spoke calmly, evenly. Without threat, but without freedom.
Once more he raised his hands, spreading them slightly—as before. Open palms, a sign: I am no enemy, but you will not pass.
He did not approach, but neither did he retreat. As if he were tracing an invisible boundary around me.
I clenched my fingers on the blanket, feeling the sharp silence.
And then they exchanged glances. All three. As if on cue, without words, already knowing what to do.
They began speaking among themselves in an unfamiliar tongue as though the dust of centuries spoke inside my head.
Their voices merged into a rhythm, and I could not grasp a single word. Each syllable slipped away, like water through fingers.
I was not part of that conversation. I was only the object of their attention.
Their eyes did not leave me, and that was becoming unbearable.
They still spoke, words that concerned me, yet passed by my consciousness as if I were behind glass, where language was only silence and guesswork.
But I felt it: they were speaking to me.
Three and each looked straight into my eyes, as though waiting for an answer.
I slowly lifted my hand and pointed first to my mouth, then to my ear. My lips moved soundlessly. Then a pause, and I gave a slight shrug, screwing my face into a grimace of incomprehension. Almost childlike. Almost helpless.
I do not understand you.
Words were unnecessary. They understood everything.
Their reaction was instant.
Their eyes widened. All three glanced at one another almost simultaneously. As though my truth, spoken in gesture, had been stronger than their suppositions.
And in that look there was fear. Not obvious. Not panic. But something deep, as if one of the pillars of their certainty had just crumbled.
The man in the grey robe quickly turned to the girl—the one with the headscarf. Said something to her, dryly, sharply. She nodded, barely perceptibly, and at once turned and left the room.
The door closed behind her softly, but with weight.
I was left, with two. With the anxiety on their faces. And with the silence that now rang louder than words.
They—opposite, I, at the edge of something that had not yet been named. No one moved. No one spoke. And in that soundlessness I suddenly caught the most important thing: I was not in danger of death. It was not merely a feeling, but… knowledge. Clear, like the print of a palm on glass. In neither their gaze, nor their breathing, nor in the manner with which they watched me, was there any will to destroy.
My body was calming. My breathing was evening out. My pulse, no longer pounded in my ears. I felt the blood return to my fingers, the muscles loosen, as if I had been tied in a knot all this time.
But inside, there was tearing. My soul was like a taut string, between fear and surmise. The world around was alien: the faces, the tongues, everything unknown. I myself, to myself, almost a stranger.
What is happening? Where am I? Who am I? Why does everything around seem so… important?
I looked at the chestnut one. He - at me. And between us there was not silence. Between us there was incomprehension. And yet… he did not avert his eyes. Nor did I.
I looked at him. For the first time, truly. Not in panic. Not in flight. But as one who has no path left but the gaze.
He stood motionless. Like a rock, yet in his presence there was something more than armor and flesh. He filled the air, and the world grew narrower simply because he was near.
Chestnut hair, in a chaos of light and shadow. Carelessly correct. As though the wind often dealt with it, yet cared nothing for it.
A young face, but the gaze… No, not young. Too quiet. Too heavy. As if he had once already seen the end, and lived after it.
His armor did not gleam, it breathed. Every line and symbol, like an ancient tongue no longer spoken. But most of all I was struck by the swords.
And only now, as I sat opposite him, calm, motionless, did I notice what had before only flickered past in panic: he bore three swords upon his back.
Three.
They did not hang carelessly, did not seem excessive. No. They were aligned in a row, almost as an axis from which his body began. Massive. Even. Straight, as a will unbending.
Broad, with heavy scabbards and intricate guard-work, as though someone had carved into the metal something unreadable. In the hilts stones. Diamonds?
I did not know. But they shone like glass of red misted light, frozen in a moment.
I did not know why a man would need three such swords. One would already be too heavy. But three…
Yet he bore them as if he had grown with them. As if they were part of his breath, not a burden. And in that was something frightening. Frightening, because incomprehensible.
My gaze slid from the knight to the other—the one who stood in shadow, in a grey, near invisible robe, as though his task were to dissolve into the background.
He was just as tall, but far slighter. Almost fragile, as though his life had stretched itself into shadow and refused excess.
Hollow cheeks. Features elongated and drawn, like a man who knows too much and speaks too little. He seemed hungry, but not in body. In something deeper.
His hands thin, pale, almost bony. Yet his movements were precise, like those of a hunting bird. In each turn of the wrist, in each tilt of the head was a precision unexpected in such leanness.
He spoke quietly. I did not hear the words, but I felt the timbre—steady, almost icy. And I watched as he exchanged words with the knight.
The one in white-silver armor listened intently. At times frowned. Twice ran his hand over his chin, not by habit, but as if seeking an answer. Once he shifted from foot to foot, as though the weight of the words were heavier than his armor.
And all of it, was about me.
I felt it.
And then ,a sound.
Quiet, yet weighty. A door.
Large, wooden. The same through which the girl with the headscarf had entered.
Not quickly. Not loudly. But with that tension that makes the heart freeze.
I did not see who entered. I only saw the door, thrown open.
And inside me… grew quieter. Expectant.
She entered and the silence in the room became different.
Not tense. Not loud.
Simply - wary.
Even the air, as if retreating to the sides, stood still.
I lifted my eyes and met hers.
Tall. Frighteningly tall. A head above the knight, who had seemed to me the embodiment of strength and beside her… seemed merely a man.
She was different. Whole. As if forged from steel in which not metal, but will had been smelted.
Her eyes. God, her eyes. Wide as an open door. The color of gold, but not warm, cold, like a crown on another's head.
They did not look. They pierced. Yellow flame, in which there was no rage, but something worse deliberate resolve.
Her hair thick, black, with a red sheen. Gathered up into a voluminous, commanding knot, from which fell a braid heavy as rope, slung over her shoulder.
She wore armor. Not just armor a second skin. Clinging, matching every curve, every line of a woman's body. Not concealing, but emphasizing that it was not for comfort, but for battle.
And all of it shone. A pattern with diamonds blue, cold, grown straight from the steel. Not decoration, but warning.
And all of it, in her movement, her stance, in every feature spoke one thing: she was merciless.
She could not be called evil. She was too calm for evil. It was… like looking at a storm that had not yet come, but you knew it was already on its way.
I understood: if there is a time to be afraid, it is now.
I could not tear my gaze away.
Her face was carved from marble precise, cold, frighteningly perfect. High cheekbones, taut as in a keeper of discipline. A straight, fine nose. Lips restrainedly full, not for smiles, but for commands.
But most of all the eyes. Golden. Not amber, not honey - gold. Living, dense, as though metal itself had become a gaze.
They did not look, they assessed. Penetrated. Her brows were predatory in their arch, as if in constant readiness for scorn. There were no lines upon her brow, yet I felt: she could frown so that even silence would retreat before her.
I did not know who she was. But instinct the one that wakes before memory was already whispering: fear her.
She stood motionless, as a statue in blue flame.
Her gaze slid over me, not as a glance, but as a sharp blade, testing the strength of cloth before the cut.
Then—a short word, thrown toward the man in the grey robe. I did not understand the meaning, but its sound was hard—as a sentence.
The man stepped forward. Unhurriedly, yet with certainty. There were no sharp movements, but each was precise. He looked at me as though seeing something beyond the boundaries of my body.
My muscles tensed, and my heart gave an extra beat, as though readying for flight.
Then she the one in blue armor, changed her face for the first time. Only for a moment. Surprise flickered through her eyes. And I caught in it… not anger. Rather confusion.
The man shook his head. Slowly. Reassuringly.
I allowed him to come closer. Perhaps from fear. Perhaps from weariness. Between us remained only centimeters.
And then I saw it.
His hand thin, almost transparent, as though the sun had not touched it for too long began to glow.
Quietly.
Like a candle beneath water.
With a silvery, soft light that seemed to be born not from his fingers, but somewhere between his palm and my skin.
He closed his eyes. And in that silence, in that strange calm, it seemed to me that he heard something I could not hear, even within myself.
Something about me.
He drew back. Slowly. With care, as though he had touched not a body—but a secret that could not be disturbed too abruptly.
The light vanished. As quietly as it had come. Dissolved into the air.
The man opened his eyes. In them, no fear, no threat.
Only… sorrow.
Such that even I, who understood nothing, wanted to turn away, as from a stranger's confession overheard by accident.
He turned to the woman in blue armor and said something to her in his sharp, foreign tongue. His voice was quiet, yet it sounded as though it beat inside my chest.
What had he said? What had he learned about me?
The woman… faltered for a moment. A shadow flickered over her face: bewilderment? Uncertainty? As though he had told her something impossible.
But it lasted only a moment.
She was once again the one who had entered: tall. Straight. Unshakable.
A warrior.
Her hand rose. Slowly. And in it, light was born. Blue. Cold. Shimmering. Like mountain water bound by a spell.
I watched as, from the air, from the void, a sword began to gather. Drop by drop. Stream by stream. It was born, not of steel, but of water.
Yet it was sharp. Real. Strong. Threatening.
And I could not bear it.
"What the hell is going on here?!" burst from me. Loud. Harsh. Like a cry tearing through the veil of incomprehension.
I frightened even myself. But along with it… I felt alive.
They froze. And looked at me, as though I had said more than just a question.
The woman in armor said something, and, catching her words, the girl with the headscarf left the room.
We were silent. All four of us. The silence settled upon our shoulders.
I sat on the bed. Only a faint, muffled burning in the back of my head reminded me: the pain had not gone. It had only quieted, hidden. But somewhere inside, it still held me on the edge of anxiety.
Questions swirled in my head, tangled.
Who are these people? What had the tall, gaunt man with the raven's face done to me? How had this woman torn a sword from the very air, as though weaving it from will and emptiness?
I knew no answers. And that was more frightening than any walls.
But suddenly…
A creak. Old, drawn out, as of a chest unopened for many years.
The door opened again.
Into the room came that same girl, the one who had earlier left in silence. Now she pushed before her a strange chair on wheels. Slowly, with effort. It was heavy, of dark wood, adorned with metal.
In the chair sat an old man. Not merely an elderly man, but an elder. As though taken from legend.
He was thin. The skin thin, almost parchment, hung from his neck and trembled on his hands as the chair jolted slightly. He wore the same grey robe as the other man, but without the hood.
His hair white, neatly bound into a knot at the nape. That single gesture told me: once, he had been a man of strength.
But now… now he seemed like a withered flower. Rootless. Sustained only by the memory of life.
I looked at him, and felt a strange sensation.
He radiated neither power nor threat. Rather a silent finality. As though he knew everything. And had accepted everything.
But something in his gaze… when he slowly raised his eyes to me, sent gooseflesh down my back.
Not from fear. From premonition.
I stared at him questioning, with a quiet tension inside, as though I myself did not understand what I was waiting for.
And he… simply smiled.
Gently. Kindly.
His face lit with that smile warm, like sunlight on winter skin. It unfolded in every fold, in every wrinkle. And suddenly it became truly frightening, because of how calmly he looked.
He inclined his head slightly and spoke slowly, tenderly, as though he had addressed me not for the first time:
"You have awakened, my child?"