A new world.
The air is stiflingly hot... scorching.
I can feel the sweat slicking my skin, my dress clinging to my curves.
I breathe in air that is a heavy blend of incense and damp wood... I am breathing, so I am alive. I haven't died once again.
It seems I will always be the girl favored by luck, the one fate grants chance after chance to atone for her mistakes, only to go back and commit the same error all over again.
I try to move my hands and feet, but they are bound. I am sitting on an incredibly hard chair; from the sound of its scrape against the floor, it seems to be made of wood. I struggle to break free, to loosen the ties, but the binding is too strong for my wrists... and the suffocating heat of the place doesn't help.
The darkness is absolute; even with my eyes wide open, I see nothing. I pray that he doesn't keep me bound just to continue my torture, or worse, take me as his slave.
Then... the door opened, and a faint light cut through the room.
He entered, wearing his blue cloak as usual. He shone his flashlight directly at me, and I squeezed my eyes shut in pain, wishing he would move the blinding rays away. He dragged a chair in front of me, locked the door, and sat there, keeping the light fixed on me.
"Where am I..? What do you want from me..? What happened to me..? What happened... where is my mother?"
"Relax, young lady..." he said, his voice laced with a threat.
But my frantic breaths and the oppressive heat won't let me relax; my tension and fear only grow. How does he expect me to relax while I am tied up in a place I don't recognize? The last thing I remember is being in the graveyard and fainting, and now I find myself in a room with this haunting scent, knowing nothing of the party or my mother.
"Where am I..?"
"You are safe," he answered, his gaze filled with pure loathing.
"And where is my mother?"
He looked at me without answering.
"Where is my mother?! What have you done... untie my hands, let me go!" I screamed at him, struggling to stand or break the chair beneath me.
"Stop annoying me!! Stop playing the fool, you Mermaid!!!" he barked, shining the light harshly onto my features.
I snapped my head away, desperate to escape the sight of his grotesque visage and the invasive, loathsome way he looked at me.
"I am going to interrogate you now," he stated in a hollow, leaden voice. "I will ask the questions, and you will answer without idiocy. In this place, silence has a very high price."
"Go to hell!" the defiance tore from my parched throat, but he didn't give me a second's grace. His hand whipped across my face in a sharp crack that echoed through the silent room—a blow that didn't just silence my tongue, but shattered my spirit and dragged me back into the abyss of helplessness.
He unsheathed his dagger once more, and I felt the biting chill of the blade graze my cheek in a blatant threat. His voice dripped with a deep-seated malice, as if I weren't just a bound girl before an old man, but a formidable enemy he truly feared. His lips curled in a grimace of pure revulsion as he whispered:
"I won't punish you for betraying our pact... I ordered you to bring me the Book, but you chose a different path."
He pressed the edge firmer; I felt the sharpness threaten to open my skin. I tried to recoil, but the ropes bit into my wrists, and the heavy wooden chair held me in place like a sacrificial lamb awaiting the blade.
"Get that knife away from me..."
"Stop calling it a knife!" he bellowed with a sudden, manic intensity, as if I had insulted a relic of his faith.
For a moment, he seemed unravelled, a man on the brink of madness. The calm, dignified aura he maintained beside Joseph had vanished, replaced by a volatile obsession that swung between hysterical rage and a sudden, hollow stillness.
He stepped back and sat opposite me, struggling to regain his composure. "As I said, I won't take my vengeance now. But answers are mandatory."
"I won't say a word until you get me out of here, you filthy old man," I spat, feeling beads of cold sweat slide from under my damp bangs, stinging my eyes.
"You will leave this room, but you will never leave this world," he replied with a coldness that turned my blood to ice.
What world did he mean? Had I been dragged into a parallel dimension governed only by death? Was I trapped in a realm inhabited by monsters like Joseph?
"I want to go back to the manor... Where is my mother? Tell me what happened to her!" I asked, my voice thick with unshed tears, fighting the urge to collapse.
"I know nothing of your mother's fate. Ask Joseph if you wish; I do not care. Now, tell me: how did you summon him?"
I screamed in sheer desperation, wrestling with bonds that threatened to sever my flesh. "Why are you and him obsessed with this?! I did what anyone would do—I summoned him from the Book!"
"Do not move!" he snarled, but the urge to be free was stronger than my fear. As expected, he ended my defiance with another slap that brought me crashing back to my tragic reality. Here, despair was the only truth.
"Do not play the fool with me... how did the ritual succeed when you are but a mere human without a spark of magic in your veins?"
"It was luck... nothing more," I whispered, broken.
"There is no room for luck in our world; everything is written in blood and destiny. Who are you, really?" His voice returned to that terrifying calm—the silence before the storm. The lethal focus in his eyes made me feel exposed, stripped bare.
"Who am I? I should be the one screaming that question! Who are you people? What do you want from a normal girl? Why am I a prisoner in this filth?"
"Enough whining and repeating hollow excuses!" he roared, lunging forward until his rank breath fanned my skin.
"I told you, maybe it's destiny," I closed my eyes to shut out the sight of him.
"Are you a witch?" he asked, his voice laced with suspicion.
"I'm not a witch... I'm not... I'm just a human!" I cried out in bitter hopelessness.
"Silence!" his voice thundered. "I lived my life in peace until you and your kind came to brand me a 'witch'... Damn you all!"
"You think it's an insult?" He let out a bitter, mocking laugh. "I loathe that your pampered generation would belong to our world. You don't deserve the honor; your kind is a stain on the history of magic."
"Good, because I have no desire to foul myself with your world anyway."
"Tell me the secret... how did you revive him?"
"I just read what was written—"
"I mean the incantation!" he cut me off sharply. "That specific spell is not for casual reading. It is the ritual of resurrection that only two people in our history have mastered: Victor and Joseph. They are the ones who penned it in their own blood. Anyone else who dared to speak those words had their throat split open and died on the spot. Who are you to do it and survive?"
He drew his dagger again, but pulled back at the last second, breathing heavily to control his agitation.
In that moment, my tears flowed unchecked. It wasn't the ropes or the room; it was the realization of the horror I had unleashed. I wasn't just facing a monster—I was now a 'miracle' or a 'curse' that everyone would fight over. I was the ordinary girl who had done what the greatest sorcerers couldn't. And that meant my head was now the ultimate prize.
"I don't know... I just read the words... I didn't mean to—"
Suddenly, the silence was shattered by the deep, heavy tolling of a bell.
It was a powerful, solemn sound, like a bell from a forgotten cathedral or a summons for a long-lost cult. It carried an alarm of an ending—or the dawn of a terrifying new era.
Orosagi looked at me, his features shifting into a grim solemnity.
"The time has come," he said.
He unfettered my bonds with a brutal efficiency, then clamped his hand around my arm as if to lead me to my doom. He began dragging me toward the door, his fingers digging into my flesh with a violence that made me wince. I followed without struggle or defiance; as long as he was taking me out of that stifling, airless room, it was in my favor—even if he were leading me straight to the slaughter.
When the door swung open, a flickering, dancing light bathed my face. Before me lay an impossibly long corridor, a passage that felt as though it had been ripped from the annals of a forgotten century. The massive stone walls were built in a stark Victorian style, their rugged textures highlighted by the rhythmic glow of fire-lit torches mounted in ancient bronze brackets. The flames leaped and swayed, casting long, distorted shadows against the masonry, while the scent of burning wood and damp stone filled my lungs.
"Where are we..? What is this place?!" I gasped, my mind reeling from the sheer scale of it.
"Follow me and be silent!" he barked, pulling me forward with unrelenting force.
I stumbled along beside him through those majestic walls, the scent of wood growing ever stronger, my head spinning as I took in the terrifying grandeur of the corridor.
"Where are you taking me?!" I cried out, but my voice was swallowed by the heavy echo of our footsteps.
I knew with absolute certainty that these structures did not exist in Scotland. Though my homeland was steeped in Victorian history, I had never seen a place where every corner was illuminated by raw, flickering torches, as if modern electricity were a myth yet to be conceived.
At the far end of the hallway stood a massive, ornate wooden door, carved with intricate, haunting patterns. Just as we reached it, I glanced to my right and caught sight of another long passage, a dark vein leading into the unknown. With a powerful shove, Orosagi pushed the door open and hauled me out behind him.
What I saw then confirmed my darkest fears: I was no longer in my country, nor my city... perhaps not even in my world.
A vast landscape unfurled before me, an empire of the old world frozen in time. It was a sprawling settlement, a city of stone and timber where houses stood in perfect, solemn ranks, their Victorian silhouettes sharp against the fading night. From our high vantage point, the lower levels looked like a medieval marketplace; lantern light flickered before wooden shopfronts, and narrow alleys teemed with a mysterious life beneath the veil of darkness.
The hour was nearing four in the morning—the sky was a bruised charcoal, draped in a light mist. Lush greenery carpeted the slopes between the stone dwellings in a stunning blend of nature and architecture. The vista was reminiscent of the kingdoms in Game of Thrones—grand, cold, and perilous—where the scent of dew-kissed grass mingled with the faint smoke of stone chimneys. I was standing in a world I had only ever read about in legends, a parallel realm governed by blood and ancient shadows.
A sloping path descended through a carpet of lush, spring greenery, acting as a bridge between our world and this empire hidden in the shadows. Orosagi continued to drag me behind him, navigating a narrow, dusty trail—a path of barren earth flanked by the vibrant blooming spring, a jarring contrast that felt like an omen.
We were heading toward a massive timber structure, grand enough to be a legendary stable or a cathedral of some ancient, forgotten faith. From behind its heavy wooden walls, a sound emerged that my ears could barely comprehend; a rowdy, rhythmic music reminiscent of Viking chants as they feasted in celebration—thumping drums and a roaring, communal chorus that filled the air with a raw, wild life.
When we reached the towering doors, Orosagi paused for a heartbeat... then threw them open.
In those few seconds, the cacophony died instantly. The music ceased, the cups froze mid-air, and a heavy, suffocating silence descended as every eye in the room fixed upon us.
The hall was teeming with people, but their faces betrayed a single truth: these were no common folk—these were sorcerers. I saw crones whose wrinkled faces told stories of centuries-old magic, beautiful young maidens, men, and children, all gathered in this space that resembled an ancient Victorian tavern. Long wooden tables stretched across the floor, where everyone sat clutching large, rounded wooden tankards overflowing with ale.
Despite the rustic atmosphere, their attire was disturbingly refined; the women wore intricate Victorian gowns, and the men were dressed in tailored leather and cloth tunics that gave them a look of wild aristocracy.
Everyone was staring at me... their gazes felt like they were piercing through my skin. I saw every possible expression: a chilling joy, the excitement that precedes a storm, suppressed rage, and a malice that shimmered in their eyes. In that moment, I felt less like a guest and more like the night's long-awaited feast.
Suddenly, a gravelly voice shattered the silence, a voice that made my heart stop:
"In the flesh... Diana!!"
Well... it seems the dinner has been served, and the only question remains: will they truly feast upon me?