Darkness pressed against her eyelids like cold stone.
For a moment, she wasn't sure if she was awake or dreaming, until the whispers returned.
hhhhh-haaah-she's stirring-
-don't let her remember-
-bind the echoes tighter-
The voices slid through the dark like thin needles of sound. Some laughed, quiet and mocking, like children playing with something they shouldn't. Others murmured in tones that chilled the blood.
Luma opened her eyes.
What greeted her was not air, nor sky, nor light.
It was water... thick, black, and endless.
She didn't breathe. Couldn't breathe. And yet she wasn't drowning.
Her limbs felt heavy. Her head throbbed so violently she almost mistook it for someone pounding against her skull from the inside. And when she tried to scream...nothing came out. No voice. No rumble. Not even a bubble.
Her throat was sealed shut as if stitched by an unseen hand.
Slowly, she lifted her gaze.
Her arms were stretched above her, chained by runed, bone-white shackles glowing faintly in the dark water. The chains coiled upward toward nothing, vanishing into the abyss.
She tugged.
The chains didn't budge.
Again. Harder.
Her whole body trembled, but the restraints were impossibly still, as though the universe itself refused to let them move.
Her eyes widened as she finally took in her own reflection or rather, her altered silhouette.
She was taller.
Her legs were longer, her frame more defined, more matured and her shadowy skin carried faint cracks of faint violet glow running along her arms and sides, like thin lightning trapped under flesh.
She didn't remember this.
She didn't remember anything.
A pulse.
Not from her heart.
From the water.
The darkness around her rippled as if something massive moved just beyond sight. Luma pressed her back to the cold stone wall behind her, breathing in silence she didn't have.
Then-
A laughter, smooth and too close.
Look at her. Our little Death Walker… grown up so beautifully.
Her pulse spiked.
The voice didn't come from around her.
It came from inside her head.
A second voice followed - deeper, distorted, like someone speaking through cracked glass.
She doesn't remember. Good. Let her wake blind. It will hurt more later.
Luma's fingers curled into fists.
Pain shot up her arms from the shackles, but she didn't stop. She forced herself still, forced her mind to focus, forced the panic down.
She needed information.
She needed control.
She needed-
The water brightened.
Faintly. Barely.
Like someone lit a candle miles above her and its glow managed a single dying reach down to her prison.
The light revealed shattered stone pillars surrounding her, moss-covered and ancient. Ruins of a place once sacred, now drowned and forgotten. Strange circular inscriptions glowed faintly on the seabed beneath her, forming a pattern she couldn't recognize.
A seal.
A prison.
Her prison.
Something shifted to her left.
She turned, as much as the chains allowed and saw nothing but a trail of drifting black sand dissolving into the depths.
But she felt something watching her.
A familiar sensation, yet distant.
Like a memory with its face scraped off.
She struggled once more. Harder. Muscles strained. The cracks of violet on her skin brightened.
This time, the chain groaned.
A single link quivered.
Her eyes sharpened-
A massive pressure slammed down from the water above, pinning her in place, crushing any movement.
She froze.
The whispers fell silent.
Even the water held its breath.
Then, softly-
Almost lovingly-
A single voice, soft and feminine, spoke from behind her ear:
"Sleep, little Luma. You're not ready to wake up."
A cold hand touched her cheek.
Her mind roared in alarm, her body screamed to move, but the pressure crushed her senses until her vision blurred.
She tried to shout again.
Nothing.
The last thing she saw before her consciousness slipped was the faint reflection in the water:
A woman behind her, face obscured, smiling with eyes of empty white.
The darkness folded over her.
And the deep swallowed her once more.