The vision

I went to bed that evening, restless and almost desperate to return to his embrace.

Our time on the balcony was playing in my mind repeatedly, and the more I attempted to block out the feelings that seemed to rest below the surface of my failing cold facade, the more they threatened to escape for everyone to see.

I was lying to myself and had been doing so for far too long.

The more I tried to push it aside, the more my heart seemed to race and my skin burned even stronger from where he had touched me.

I rolled my eyes in frustration as I murmured to myself.

"Get a grip or you'll lose it completely"

Unsurprisingly this did not help in the least and found myself allowing my thoughts to run wild.

I silently prayed that he had felt something similar - if anything at least a tinge of what seemed to consume me at this point.

I stared up at the ceiling, attempting to clear my mind while the time flashed by.

One hour passed, then another.

As the third hour approached, I sat up frustratedly and shook my head.

He lingered on me, not only his scent on my skin and his voice in my head but his very presence seemed to linger in the air.

It would not matter where I went.

He would be there.

I pulled the thin robe tighter around my body as I quietly tiptoed through the halls in the dark of night.

Admittedly I had not even remotely thought my plan through, perhaps because of lack of the same.

It was as if some invisible force was telling me to go see him, leading me to him.

The closer I got to his chambers, the more the familiar sensation on the back of my neck seemed to grow.

My entire body was on edge and I felt like he was watching me somehow.

I paused in front of the large wooden door as reality suddenly hit me.

What was I doing??

I should not be there, not on my own and certainly not at that hour and I knew it, but yet I could not convince myself to go back to my room.

It was as though I had suddenly become incapable of moving and my breath seemed to catch in my throat.

Moments later I heard rustling behind the door and I snapped out of my daze.

"Stella you have officially lost it.."

I scolded myself quietly as I backed away from the sound.

The sensation on the back of my neck was spreading rapidly and I knew there was no turning back at this point.

He knew I was there.

Even if he had not heard me a moment ago, he surely must have felt me.

There was no way he would not have, as the tingling sensation was now so powerful, that it felt like my body was on fire or submerged in ice-cold water.

I heard footsteps just behind the door and the knob slowly started turning.

I was not sure what had hit me first, the sudden breathlessness or the strong smell of alcohol coming from him as he leaned against the doorframe.

His eyes were dull and he looked sedated, yet fully aware and alert.

Was he drunk?

I froze in place at the sight of him emerging from the shadows and suddenly felt unable to breathe.

He was beautiful. His pale skin was lit up from the moonlight that peeked through the windows in the hallway and his eyes glistened dangerously.

He looked me in the eyes with a look of defeat, yet he seemed incredibly composed for someone as intoxicated as he seemed to be.

Before I could manage to speak, he reached out to play with a lock of my hair.

He slowly twirled it around his slender fingers as he watched me in silence.

Whether it was on purpose or not, his hand gently brushed against my collarbone as he pulled away slightly, causing us both to freeze in place.

He had not averted his gaze from mine for even a second and I was slowly becoming aware of just how close he was standing to me.

His voice was soft and barely a whisper when he spoke and his words seemed to linger in the air between us.

"If you value your soul you will turn away now and forget about this Stella. I am incapable of doing it myself, so if you don't, we will both be..."

Either he failed to finish his sentence, or his last words were spoken too quietly for me to hear.

I knew I should have turned my back on him and left right then and there, but even the thought of doing so seemed to slowly kill something inside of me.

I could not breathe or think or move.

I needed him, just as desperately as I knew he needed me and neither of us answered to reason at this point.

We were too far gone to turn back and frankly I do not think either of us cared.

He was my salvation and my doom, as I was his.

It was as though my body moved on its own when I pulled him into a deep kiss.

At that moment we lost ourselves, although only one of us knew it at the time.

That kiss sealed my fate with him.

A fate I would soon discover would prove fatal to what had meant most to me up until that point - and there was no salvation from it.

No salvation from the bond that had enslaved us and slowly led us over the edge, and no salvation from the darkness that threatened to consume us both.

I fell asleep in his arms, exhausted and weak, my body trembling against him.

In my sleep the visions I dreaded and loathed returned to me with sinister warnings.

A woman dressed in a black wedding gown walked down the aisle of a small church with a bundle of withered white roses in her arms.

Her face was covered by the sheer fabric of a black veil, leaving her identity unknown to me, although something seemed oddly familiar.

At first, it appeared as though she was alone in the church as the rows of wooden benches on either side of the aisle were empty.

Each of her slow steps and the sound of the dress of her tail dragging against the dirty stone floor echoed eerily and I felt the hairs on my body rise in warning as she slowly approached the altar.

The vision suddenly broke into fractures as she approached two steps up.

The echo intensified with each step.

One...

Clack

A sudden bolt of lightning shot through the fragile glass windows on the right side and the bride fell to the floor.

The scenery swirled around as if being swept up in a storm as a tall dark figure appeared in front of her.

A man.

There was a dark and dangerous vibe to him and I felt as though the woman was in danger as he reached out a large gloved hand to her.

I was dizzy and confused as the vision twirled me around in the whirlwind, showing me the entrance to the church lit up from sunlight and the altar on the other end, slowly crumbling around the woman and the man.

She reached out to take his hand as another lightning struck and impaled her.

Her lifeless body sunk onto the cold stone floor in front of the man and he broke down in front of her, his cries piercing my ears as he picked up her limb body, embracing it and desperately trying to wake her.

His words were muffled by the whirlwind and I felt myself being swept away the moment her name left his lips.

Two...

Another loud clack echoed as I once again found myself standing behind the woman.

To say I was confused would have been the greatest understatement.

The woman was unharmed and the room seemed brighter than it had before the whirlwind had swept me away.

The moment she reached the top of the stairs, a frail ghostly figure appeared beside her and the dark figure, the man from earlier appeared in front of her once more.

The ghostly figure was a striking resemblance to her and it made me uneasy to the point where I felt as though I had to vomit. The man reached out his hands to both of the women and the two turned to face each other for a brief moment, before turning to face me.

The whirlwind from earlier slowly returned and I felt myself being pulled away from the vision, just as the two women began to lift their veils.

I fought against it as hard as I could, with my heart pounding in my chest to the point where it hurt.

The vision was getting blurry and I was getting lightheaded from being swept around.

Just as I felt something shake violently, I managed to see their faces, but only for a split second before Zack's voice pulled me out of the vision.

He was shaking me and begging for me to wake up, his voice frantic as he called out my name repeatedly.

I was sweating and my heart was racing.

Still dizzy and disoriented from being pulled out of the vision, I put a hand on his arm to let him know I was okay.

I could tell he had been yelling from the way he was panting and the way his voice sounded when he spoke.

He sounded lost and afraid when he asked me what happened, but I could not manage much other than a groan at that point. The vision was already fading from my memory, but one thing remained clear.

It was something that would be permanently engraved in my mind and leave me both intrigued and confused but most of all afraid.

I was unsure of the ghostly woman's identity but there was no way I could have been wrong about the woman in black.

I knew her all too well by her features and I had instantly realized why she had seemed familiar even before I had seen her face.

The woman in black was me...

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