Eoghan leaned back in the chair, feeling the weight of the day press into him, but the exhaustion of his body was nothing compared to the heaviness lodged in his chest. He closed his eyes, seeking a moment of quiet, but the silence of the chamber offered no comfort. Every shadow seemed to press closer, every heartbeat thundered against his ribs, and even the small flicker of candlelight could not keep the darkness at bay.
A voice broke through the oppressive silence of the chamber.
It was soft, yet unmistakably familiar, cutting through the haze of fatigue and fear, threading into his consciousness in a way that made his heart seize. He froze, unable to move or speak, certain that this must be a trick of his mind.
__???: "Eoghan…"
His chest tightened, and each breath came jagged and shallow, as if the air itself had thickened around him. His mind refused to accept what it thought it had heard. Could it really be her? His heart twisted in anticipation and fear, beating so loudly that he was certain she must hear it. His green eyes squeezed shut, unwilling to confront the possibility, willing himself to believe it was some cruel trick of fatigue or grief.
The voice came again, deliberate this time, insistent and impossible to ignore. Every syllable carried the cadence he knew so intimately, threading into his very marrow.
__???: "Eoghan…"
His mind spun in a violent clash of hope and terror, and every beat of his heart threatened to betray him. He held himself still, his chest rising and falling in shallow, deliberate breaths, each one measured as though the slightest motion might shatter the fragile boundary between reality and nightmare that had haunted him for months.
He opened his eyes slowly, each blink was a negotiation with the disbelief that clutched at him like iron. The chamber, dim and flickering with candlelight, seemed unchanged, yet nothing felt the same. And there, standing with a stillness that made his pulse hammer like a drum against his ribs, was the woman he had longed for with every fragment of his being.
Her brown skin, smooth and luminous in the flickering light, seemed to hold the memory of warmth and sun. The braids of her hair fell carefully over her shoulders, catching the candlelight in subtle glints, each strand echoing the countless moments he had traced with his eyes in memory. Her soft smile, hesitant but tender, was the echo of every laugh, every glance, every whispered promise that had anchored him to life when the world had seemed ready to crumble.
For a moment, suspended in that impossible reality, Eoghan's mind clung to silence. His chest pressed tight, breath trembling in shallow bursts, caught between hope and the terror of certainty. He wanted to reach for her, to fall forward and cradle her in his arms, to touch, to prove that this was real but the part of him that had known despair so intimately refused to act. His body had frozen before the impossibility of seeing what he had mourned as lost.
Time stretched and warped as Shanane began to move toward him. Every slow step carried a gravity that twisted his stomach with anticipation and dread. His green eyes widened, taking in the curve of her shoulder, the sway of her body, the subtle cadence of her presence that seemed to bend the very air around him. With each step, the heartbeat in his chest thudded harder and louder, until it felt as though the rhythm of his life itself had shifted, uncertain and trembling.
She stopped only a whisper away, and he could feel the heat of her nearness without contact. The scent of her, faint, familiar and impossibly tender threaded into his senses, tying his mind in knots of disbelief and longing. And then, as though surrendering to a gravity he could not resist, she lowered herself onto his lap, the warmth of her body pressing against his own, her weight grounding him even as the world felt unmoored.
Eoghan's hands remained at his sides, trembling yet unable to move. His green eyes locked onto hers, wide and unblinking, absorbing every detail: the softness of her cheek, the curve of her lips, the impossibility that this could be reality. Every instinct screamed to grasp her, to reassure himself that she was flesh, blood, warmth but he could not. His limbs, heavy with disbelief, betrayed him with paralysis.
__Shanane: "I've missed you."
She whispered, her voice brushing against his skin like a remembered wind.
Her fingers lifted, tracing the line of his jaw with deliberate and impossibly slow tenderness. Each touch sent a shiver through him. It was a lightning strike of memory and desire that collided with a terror he could not name. His breath came in shallow restrained pulls, as though any exhale might shatter the fragile veil of this encounter. His heart thudded against ribs that felt suddenly brittle, every beat echoing in the hollow of the chamber and in the hollow of his mind.
Slowly and almost unbearably, the warmth of her face bled into shadow, reshaping into something alien. Her face that was once the familiar map of all he had loved began to twist. The soft brown skin deepened into shadows that crawled and writhed as if alive. Her smile, once tender, stretched unnaturally, her teeth sharpened, glinting in the candlelight with a cruel luminescence. The braids fell apart, twisting into sinewy black tendrils, curling against her cheeks like serpents seeking purchase. Her eyes, once warm and comforting became voids of dark fire, pupils slit and glimmering with a malevolence that seemed to pierce the marrow of his bones.
Eoghan could feel the icy fingers of dread unraveling his mind, each heartbeat a drum of panic. The candlelight flickered violently, shadows bending and leaping across the walls as if responding to the horror before him. He tried to scream, to push her away but sound refused to form in his throat, leaving him suspended in a mute scream that vibrated through every fiber of his being.
Her hands impossibly strong closed around his neck, pressing with an inexorable pressure that robbed him of air. The warmth of her body, once a balm, became a weight of inevitability, suffocating and relentless. His chest heaved in silent desperation, lungs clawing for oxygen that would not come. The green of his eyes widened further, reflecting the monstrous visage inches from his own, the candlelight glinting across jagged features that bore every cruelty he had ever feared.
As he struggled, helpless and immobile, the world around him blurred and narrowed to a single point of horror: the demon's face, so cruelly familiar in its betrayal of the woman he loved, pressing closer, tighter, as though his very life were a thing to be unmade. Panic spiraled, drowning thought, memory, and reason in a flood of raw, suffocating terror.
And in that instant, when the weight pressed fully into his chest, when the air was gone, when the green of his eyes shone with the impossible mixture of love, disbelief, and helpless horror, he understood the cruelest truth: there was no escape, no certainty. Only the shadow of what he had loved contorted into the nightmare he could not fight, could not speak against, could not even blink away.
The darkness of the room pressed into him, the demon's visage burning into his mind, and all that remained was the suffocating echo of his own despair, the impossibility of the woman he loved transformed into the horror that had stalked his every thought since that cursed night.
He came to with a violent jolt, the world crashing back into him through the rough weight of hands on his shoulders. His green eyes flew open, wild, the chamber swimming in a haze of flickering shadows. His breath tore through his chest in shallow, broken pulls, sweat running cold down his back as if he had been dragged from drowning.
__???: "Lord Eoghan..."
The voice was sharp and strained, cutting through the blur of panic. It was one of his advisors, his face pale with alarm hovered over him.
The head of the village stared up at the advisor, his throat burning raw from the scream that had never broken free. For a heartbeat he couldn't move nor trust the chamber around him to be solid. His hands trembled against the arms of the chair.
__Eoghan: "I…"
His swallowed hard, trying to steady himself, but the taste of iron clung to his tongue.
__Eoghan: "It was… a nightmare."
He murmured
The word felt pitiful like a flimsy shield against the suffocating dread still clinging to him. But that was the safe answer. That was what sane men said.
Yet, in the silence that followed, doubt gnawed at him. Was it truly a dream? Or had he been touched by something darker, something that blurred the line between memory and waking terror? He could still feel her warmth on his lap, the press of her fingers on his skin and the crushing choke of her hands. His heart hammered, confused and violent, as if refusing to let him decide what was real.
The advisor drew back slightly shocked but what he was seeing. His eyes went wide and his face drained of color. His lips parted, trembling, and he whispered hoarsely.
__Asvisor: "By all the gods…"
Eoghan lifted his head slowly, confusion etched across his features, his long hair sticking damp against his temples.
__Eoghan: "What is it?"
The advisor looked as if he'd seen a ghost. His gaze darted to Eoghan's throat, then back to his eyes, as though afraid to name what he saw. Finally, with a voice unsteady and tight, he forced the words out.
__Advisor: "Who… who did this to you? Did someone try to kill you?"
The former huntsman blinked, his chest tightening as his hand rose instinctively to his neck. His fingers brushed tender flesh, and his breath stalled. The advisor's words carved into him before his mind could shape meaning.
__Eoghan: "What are you talking about?"
He rasped, though dread had already begun its crawl beneath his skin.
The advisor hesitated, his voice breaking with disbelief.
__Advisor: "Your throat..."
He lifted a hand, not daring to touch.
__Advisor: "It's marked. As if someone's hands had been around it."
The chamber seemed to contract around the new head of the village, the flickering candlelight bending like a cruel witness. His hand pressed harder to his throat, feeling the ridges of raised skin beneath his fingertips, hot and tender.
His pulse hammered against the bruises, every beat a reminder that this was no phantom terror. The marks were there, raw and livid beneath his fingers.
Something had been in that room with him. Something that had reached through the shadows and left its mark, pressing against him in a way no dream ever could. The air still seemed thick and charged, as if the presence lingered, just beyond vision. Every shadow flickered with intent, every whisper of the wind outside the windows felt like a warning.
He sat rigid in the chair, sweat cooling on his skin, breath ragged and uneven. His fingers traced the bruises along his throat, each one throbbing in rhythm with his hammering pulse. They were unmistakably real. Something had touched him, and the memory of that contact pressed heavier than any fear he had known.
A cold weight settled over him, coiling through his chest and spine. Every creak of the manor made him flinch as if the room itself were waiting to strike. His stomach knotted with raw and untempered dread, anger and fear tangled so tightly that he could barely breathe. He was exposed and vulnerable, and nothing in the safety of walls or stone could shield him from what had been here.
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