Aria's POV
The first thing I felt that morning was the weight. It wasn't just pressing on my chest though that was there too it was everywhere. In the air. In my bones. In the silence itself. The kind of silence that doesn't feel peaceful… the kind that makes you wonder if the world is holding its breath for something it knows is coming.
I sat curled up by the window, my knees drawn to my chest, my chin resting lightly on top of them. My breath fogged the glass in short, uneven bursts. Out beyond the walls, the world was shrouded in a pale, silver mist, curling and weaving over the pines. The sun hadn't yet fully risen, and the light that managed to slip through the clouds was thin as if the sky wasn't sure it wanted to touch the earth today. I hadn't slept well. Again.
The dreams were worse now. Thick with whispers. They wrapped around me like smoke, curling in my ears, sinking into my skin. I could never see faces only flashes of pale eyes and long shadows stretching across a forest floor. Sometimes there was a hand, reaching toward me. Sometimes, there was blood. But always… there was the feeling that someone was calling me. Not in a voice I knew, but in one I felt. Every time I woke, I expected the feeling to fade. But it never did. It clung to me through the day, soft and constant, like a heartbeat that wasn't mine. I thought about Ares.
Lately, he'd been watching me differently. Not just with concern, but with something else. Hesitation. Maybe even wariness. Like he was waiting for me to do something unexpected. Like he wasn't entirely sure who I was anymore. James… James didn't bother hiding it. He never came right out and said it, but I could see it in the way his jaw would tighten when I walked into a room, or how he'd study me out of the corner of his eye during training. He trusted me as much as he trusted an open flame in a dry forest dangerous, if left unchecked. The truth? They didn't know the half of it.
For weeks, something had been changing inside me. It wasn't just the sharper senses, though that was part of it. I could hear a heartbeat from across the hall. Smell rain before the clouds even formed. I could hear the scrape of a dagger being drawn three rooms away. And then there were the other things. The flashes. Sometimes they were images a wolf I didn't recognize standing at the edge of the packhouse, a moon bathed in crimson light, my own hands stained red. Other times, they were words phrases in a language I didn't know but somehow understood in my bones. Words that tasted ancient, heavy, inevitable.
During training last week, I'd dodged a strike I hadn't even seen coming. Not because I saw the movement but because I felt it, as if my body had known before my eyes did. It had scared the hell out of me. This morning was no different except for one thing.
As I stared at the forest, I noticed movement. My eyes narrowed, focusing through the mist. Someone was there. At the farthest edge of the trees stood a figure. Still. Too still. Their hair was dark, falling over their shoulders in loose waves. Their eyes… gods, their eyes. Even from this distance, they caught the light pale and sharp, fixed directly on me. I couldn't breathe. I didn't move. They didn't move either. Didn't blink. Just watched. A chill crawled down my spine. I blinked and they were gone.
I scanned the treeline again, but it was empty. Just the mist shifting lazily over the undergrowth, curling into itself before fading into the air.
I told myself it was nothing. A trick of the light. My imagination running wild after another restless night. But my heart was still pounding too hard for it to be nothing.
I turned back to my room and froze. On my desk, perfectly centered, lay a slip of parchment. I hadn't heard anyone enter. I hadn't looked away from the window long enough for someone to place it there. The door was locked. The curtains still swayed slightly from the open window, letting in the faint chill of dawn.
I crossed the room slowly, each step heavier than the last. My instincts were screaming at me to leave it alone. To walk away. But my hand didn't listen.
The parchment was cold when I picked it up unnaturally cold, as though it had been sitting in snow moments ago. Three words. Written in ink so dark it looked like it had been bled onto the page:
She will rise.
I read them once. Twice. Again.
The words weren't just a warning. They didn't feel like one. They felt like a promise. Like something already decided. And as I stood there, my hands shaking so badly the parchment trembled, a deeper realization slid into me like ice. I'd heard those words before. Not here. Not in the waking world. In my dreams. And every time, they had been followed by something I could never quite hear. Until now. Because this time, a voice in the back of my mind whispered the rest.
She will rise… and the world will burn.