Chapter 122

Darkness.
I was drowning in it.
One moment, I was in my bed, the sting of my bruises still raw, and my body barely holding itself together. The next, I was here—standing in the middle of an endless forest, surrounded by towering trees with twisted branches that clawed at the sky like skeletal fingers.
The air was humid, and smelled of damp earth and something else. Something old.
I blinked rapidly, trying to adjust to the sudden shift. My heart pounded hard and my mind was a haze of questions I had no answer to.
Where was I?
Had I died? Was this Hell?
Dios mío… I tried to move, but my feet felt like they had been swallowed by the ground. I looked down. My dress was torn and bloodied and was still the same one I had fallen asleep in.
The bruises on my arms were still there, the pain still humming beneath my skin. So this wasn’t a dream.
Was it?
I swallowed hard and turned in a slow circle, my breath coming in shaky gasps. “Hello?” My voice was weak and was swallowed by the thick silence. “Is anyone there?”
I heard nothing in response. Only my own voice echoed back at me.
I tried again, louder this time. “Hello?!”
Still, no answer.
The forest felt alive—not with people, but with something else. Something unseen, watching, waiting. The trees whispered in a wind I couldn’t feel, and the shadows were unnaturally stretching, like they had minds of their own.
Where was I? What the fuck was this place?
I began to heave, panicked, beads of sweat gathering on my forehead. Does it ever end?
Why do I always jump from one problem to the other?
I was still horrified, still nearly hyperventilating when suddenly, out of the darkness, a pair of eyes appeared.
They were the most golden pair of eyes I had ever seen.
Not warm like honey, but cold. Goring. They glowed, flickering like fire yet as still as death. They weren’t human.
A chill crawled down my spine, wrapping all over me like icy tendrils. I took an unsteady step back, my breath hitching in my throat.
No. No, no, no.
This was bad.
It must be a monster. A vampire, maybe? They would kill me.
“Please I whispered, chest rising and falling. “I don’t know what’s happening, but if—if you’re here to hurt me, don’t. Please don’t.”
The eyes remained unmoving. Unblinking. It was just there, fixed and watching me.
Every instinct in my body screamed at me to run, and I wanted to do that more than anything. It was the most sensible thing to do, but I couldn’t.
My legs refused to listen. I was frozen, trapped in a place like prey before a predator.
Then, just as suddenly as they had appeared…
They vanished.
The breath I had been holding escaped in a sharp gasp. My legs wobbled, threatening to give out beneath me.
I was going to cup my mouth, scared that the sound I made could alert them, but I ended up gasping with every pulse in me throbbing.
He was there.
A man.
No, a shadow. No, something worse.
He stood before me, materializing as if he had stepped out of the darkness itself.
He was tall. Cloaked in black from head to toe. The fabric of his long coat rippled even though there was no wind. His hair, just as black, framed a face that shouldn’t have belonged to something so terrifying.
Because it was beautiful.
A cruel, inhuman kind of beauty. The kind that didn’t belong to the living but to something ancient, something untouchable… immortal.
His skin was pale, almost luminescent beneath the eerie glow of his golden eyes. His sharp and curved lips tilted into the faintest hint of a smile—if it could even be called that.
It wasn’t a kind smile. It was the kind that sent a shiver down your spine, the kind that promised things you weren’t sure you wanted to hear.
I couldn’t move. I couldn’t breathe.
His presence was suffocating, heavy, and holding me down like an invisible force.
Then, he moved.
A gloved hand extended toward me, fingers impossibly long, as if stretching beyond the limits of human proportions. He touched my cheek.
I gulped. Such… such coldness.
Not the cold of winter or ice, but something deeper. Something that didn’t belong in this world. It seeped into my skin, curling through my veins, making my already weak body tremble.
I gasped.
A whisper of delight passed over his lips.
“My child,” he said.
His voice wasn’t loud, but it echoed, swirling around my mind like a whisper in the dark.
Well, it indeed was a whisper in the dark. His child?
I flinched. “W-what?”
His hand didn’t move. If anything, the grip of his fingers on my cheek grew firmer. Not painful, but commanding.
Or maybe… Possessive.
“You have suffered,” he murmured, tilting his head as if inspecting me. “But all of it was necessary.”
Necessary?
My breathing accelerated. My mind was screaming at me to pull away, to do anything but stand here like some helpless doll. But I couldn’t.
“You—who are you?” I croaked.
As if my question was an abomination, his brow arched in surprise.
“Ah.” His lips parted slightly. “You can still speak?” Tʜe source of this ᴄontent ɪs.net
Finally, he blinked. “Impressive.”
I had no idea what he meant. I didn’t care. I just wanted to know what the hell was happening.
“Who are you?” I repeated, my voice steadier this time, though my body betrayed me by quivering.
He chuckled. It was a rich sound that sounded more like the strings on a harp than a laugh.
“Fascinating,” he mused. “No one has ever overridden my spell before.”
I frowned. “Spell?”
His eyes darkened, the golden glow intensifying. He traced his fingers down my cheek, over my jaw, as if memorizing the shape of my face.
“This only confirms what I already knew,” he murmured. “You are truly my blood.”
My heart stopped.
His blood?
I swallowed down hard, silence descending between us. I stared at him, unblinking with my mind scrambling to make sense of his words.
No. That didn’t make sense.
This was some kind of nightmare, right? Some sick, twisted hallucination brought on by the pain and exhaustion.
I wasn’t his anything.
I wasn’t…