Chapter 372
ROMAN
+25 Points
I was lying there, not quite asleep, not fully awake, when it began–the voice. Low at first, almost like a
whisper brushing against the edges of my mind, pulling at something deep within me.
It was a language I had never heard. The sounds twisted through the air, curling into shapes I could almost
see. Strange consonants, vowels stretched unnaturally, syllables that seemed to echo both near and far at
the same time.
I tried to turn over, tried to tell myself it was nothing, that it was just my imagination running loose, but the
voice persisted. And then, slowly, fragments began to make sense. Just pieces at first–words, ideas,
commands that flickered in my brain like shards of glass.
My limbs refused to move. I tried to lift my arm, to reach for something, anything, but it was as if the bed
itself had swallowed me whole. My hands hovered above the sheets, frozen, useless. My chest tightened, and I felt the strangest kind of weight pressing down on my lungs. I wanted to scream, to call out, but no
sound came. My voice had been stolen.
And then I saw her.
She was lying on a stone surface. Cold, and ancient in its stillness. I couldn’t make out much at first, only
the curve of her body, the way her hair fanned out like dark water across the stone. Her arms were
stretched out, wrists bleeding, though I didn’t know how it had happened or why. The air around her
seemed to thrum with the voice’s rhythm, vibrating through the room–or whatever place this was–like it
belonged to the stones themselves.
I wanted to move toward her. I wanted to save her. I tried again, tried with all my will, but my body
remained frozen. I could see her, I could feel the weight of the scene, but I was trapped in a bubble of helplessness. Every instinct screamed at me to act, to run, to grab her, but my limbs refused.
I floated there, suspended between panic and paralysis, and the world around me started to distort. The edges of the stone table blurred, the shadows stretching and bending unnaturally. The air thickened, sticky and heavy, and every time I tried to focus on the woman, the chanting grew louder, more insistent. It filled my head, echoed inside my skull, and I felt my teeth clench against the rising panic.
I could feel her pulse–or maybe it was my own–thumping beneath my ribs, going with the voice. The sensation was overwhelming. Every instinct I had wanted to reach her, wanted to pull her away from
whatever danger she was in, but I was tethered in place, watching, powerless.
I started to notice more details. The stone beneath her was old and dark, veins of crimson spreading across its surface in a pattern that made my stomach turn. Her hair gleamed in the dim light that seemed to emanate from nowhere, shadowed in a way that made her look both ethereal and fragile. Her wrists- the blood was steady, slow–and my chest tightened further. I tried to think, to figure out how to help, but every logical thought scattered under the pressure of fear and confusion.
< Chapter 372
I could feel the pull of the voice guiding me forward, urging me closer, and my mind screamed in
contradiction. Closer? I wanted to move closer, but it was impossible.
And then her head turned.
+25 Points
A slow, deliberate movement, and my stomach sank in recognition before my mind fully caught up. I froze, eyes widening, and then the impossible happened–the face came into view, illuminated just enough for me to see, framed by the strange, flickering light that seemed to exist only in this strange place.
It was Faye.
My breath caught in my throat. My heart raced so fast it hurt. My chest tightened in a way I hadn’t thought possible. She was there, lying on that cold stone, bleeding from her wrists, and I could do nothing. Nothing. My hands twitched uselessly at my sides. My legs were bricks. My voice–a scream, a shout, anything–was swallowed by the void.
I wanted to run forward, to pull her off that stone, to shake her awake, to tell her she wasn’t alone. But I couldn’t. Every instinct to act was trapped under the weight of the strange hold, leaving me a spectator to
the impossible scene unfolding before me.
Her eyes met mine.
The world around me seemed to tremble. The stone, the shadows, the voice–all of it pulsed with a rhythm that matched the panic in my chest. My mind tried to grasp it, tried to reason, tried to make sense of why I was frozen, why she was there, why the voice sounded like something it shouldn’t. But no logic existed here. Only fear. Only helplessness. Only the eyes of the woman I knew and cared for, locked on mine, asking silently for a salvation I couldn’t provide.
I opened my eyes.
It was a dream.
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Sara Lili is a daring romance writer who turns icy landscapes into scenes of fiery passion. She loves crafting hot love stories while embracing the chill of Iceland’s breathtaking cold.
