All good things must end

I walked around the garden in the cold dark hours of the morning, if one could even call it so.

The night seemed endless and I could not seem to shake the sound of panic in Zack's voice as he had desperately tried to wake me earlier that same night.

I had told him that I would be returning to my room, but he must have known that it was a complete lie, because he had sent his three gargoyles - I mean, cousins to accompany me.

He knew me all too well at this point and I hated to admit it.

I was breathing deeply through my nose and exhaling calmly through my mouth, watching little clouds of fog appear and disappear in the air before me.

The sky was dimly lit by millions of bright speckles scattered across the dark ceiling that made up the heavens and I found myself relaxing for the first time in a long while.

I dragged my bare feet through the dewy grass and felt the pearls of the morning mist against my skin like little kisses from each straw of grass.

The howling of wolves could be heard in the distance which seemed to make my three companions alert.

At the time I did not think too much of it but picked up my pace in an attempt to create a little more distance between myself and them.

Fully aware of what I was trying to do, Max quietly cleared his throat as he approached me.

"I think we should be heading back miss Lockwood, it really isn't safe for you to be out here at night and…"

I interrupted him with a sigh of obvious annoyance.

"For the love of God Max, can't you guys let me feel like I'm normal and have the freedom to do what I want for just five minutes??"

My slight outburst made him flinch a little, as sensitive as he was and he almost looked guilty for a moment as he gestured towards the main building of my prison.

"Fine…"

I scoffed as I reluctantly walked back in the direction we had come from.

Max seemed slightly relieved that I did not put up a fight or throw a tantrum as he would then have had to subdue me, much against his nature.

Sometimes I could not help but wonder why he was asked to do this job in the first place - the other two men made perfect sense as they were both too frightening to argue against, for seperate reasons, but Max… Max was different and he knew it all too well.

He was gentle of nature and seemed very understanding of my behavior given the situation.

Part of me found him cute, like one would a puppy or a child, but another part of me was oddly drawn to him.

He had a tinge of the same aura that Zack emitted, yet it was not the same at all and I found it utterly intriguing.

The walk back to my room was quiet and slightly tense for some reason.

The three men still seemed alert and almost worried, as if we were all in danger, although Max tried his best to hide it - supposedly to avoid making me worried as well.

The air was heavy and cold, almost clammy and I found it difficult to breathe all of a sudden.

A buzzing slowly began to fill my head and it was not long before I found myself drowned in a misty substance.

I thought I could hear Max calling out my name, but it faded with the rest of my surroundings as the mist seemed to thicken. Faint voices ecchoed in the air around me and something urged me to walk.

I followed blindly, the only sound suddenly being my bare feet against the floor as I approached my unknown destination. The air became colder and thicker the closer I got, and I hugged myself absentmindedly in a failed attempt to keep it at a distance.

I noticed the walls around me changing until I was surrounded by dark mountain both above, around and below me.

Despite feeling both lost and afraid at this point, I was unable to resist the inner urge that told me to keep on walking and so I complied.

The misty substance slowly faded as I found myself entering what looked like a small cathedral with rows of worn wooden benches on either side of a small aisle.

The cold resided even after the mist had cleared and my vision had returned, leaving my body trembling and weak.

The tips of my fingers and toes were hurting but I shoved it aside and tried my best to focus all of my attention on my surroundings.

It seemed eerily familiar.

Too familiar. A quick vision flashed before my eyes as an ear piercing scream echoed through the cave-like cathedral.

The woman in black was standing by the alter as lightning struck and she fell to the ground into a lifeless bundle.

She was gone as quickly as she had appeared, but I was beginning to realise that my visions were trying to tell me something. Warn me.

I took a few moments to collect myself before I slowly but surely made my way up to the altar, where she - or I, had been standing just a moment ago.

I closed my eyes as I listened to the quiet taps of my feet against the cold lifeless stone floor beneath me, allowing the visions to run their course freely in my mind.

For the first time in my life, I was not only inviting them - I was welcoming them.

I felt like I was so close to getting the answers that I had been so desperately searching for, that I lost myself in the moment and paid no thought to the possible consequences of doing so.

Connecting myself with the force that had granted me my visions, I surrendered to my past, present and my future, letting the images fill my mind like fractions of a movie.

Some fractions familiar and some very strange and alien in nature.

My body began to weaken more with each vision as if I was giving up a part of myself for each little piece of truth I was recovering.

A sharp pain shot through my knees and into my entire body as my knees hit the floor, causing me to fall over.

"No. no no stop… It's too much…"

A voice no louder than a whisper escaped me and I felt realization strike me.

I had wanted the truth for so long, but I had wanted it so badly, so desperately that I had not even considered what it would cost me.

Tears trailed down my cheeks and stained the floor beneath me with a red hue.

I was blind and my body was growing weaker by the second, some invisible force draining me of not only my strength but also my senses.

I cried out a name, chanting it over and over again as if it was my one chance of surviving.

His name seemed foreign when it passed my lips, almost as if it had been an alien language.

My words trailed off into whispers and then silence, leaving me silently heaving against the cold stone floor.

The visions were getting blurry and I had completely lost track of and given up on making sense of any of them.

As my lungs failed me and my vision faded into darkness, a voice seemed to call out from a distance.

I was too far gone to respond and let the darkness take me away.

I woke up in a bed in a place I did not recognize.

It was a small room with a rounded ceiling far above my head, windows making up the center which allowed the moon to shine through, similar to the room I had previously been introduced to.

The walls around me were beautifully painted in a green naturalistic pattern, adorned with something that looked like small gemstones, in the shapes of flowers and birds sitting on branches made of golden thread.

It all seemed to catch the moonlight and reflect it in various bright colors, almost like little stars.

I had not noticed him sitting there and was startled by a soft voice.

"This is the moon room…"

Instinctively my eyes looked in the direction of the voice and locked with his, causing me to instantly feel more at ease.

I managed a throaty giggle as I replied in a slightly ironic tone of voice.

"Fitting"

He seemed slightly amused by my comment and his gaze softened, never evading mine.

The tingling sensation had not warned me of his presence which at first seemed strange, but I simply shrugged it off with the explanation that I must have been exhausted to the point of failing senses.

A puzzled look crossed my face at the thought and he seemed to notice but did not offer me an explanation, thus leaving my unanswered question hanging in the air between us.

Unspoken but fully understood.

He murmured out something along the lines of an apology as he got up from the edge of the bed.

He strolled around the room restlessly and I felt like he was trying to tell me something but failed to because he feared my reaction.

I sat up ever so slightly and rested the weight of my body against my elbows against the soft mattress beneath me.

The sound of me speaking his name caused him to stop dead in his tracks but he still could not get himself to look at me.

"What happened?" I asked him, not as much wanting an answer as I wanted him to talk to me and look at me.

What I would not do to have him look at me just once.

Something about him made me feel safe, even in situations like this.

He failed to look at me as he spoke, and what he said next made my blood freeze.

"I think you're dying Stella…".

[Author's note: Please don't forget to vote and leave a review if you enjoy my novel <3 Thank you!]