Strange Dreams

Rose

The wind was different in the woods that night.

Not cruel, but ancient. Listening.

I felt it in my lungs, in the hush of the leaves above us, in the hum of something old settling beneath my skin like a second heartbeat. When Ivar pressed his bleeding palm to my chest, the world blurred, tilted and then broke open.

But it didn't hurt.

It felt like stepping into a river I had forgotten I was born from.

I dreamt of stars.

Not the kind that blink from behind clouds, but ones that lived in the bones of the earth. In the roots of trees and the cracks of mountains. They pulsed beneath my feet, calling me by name.

I stood in a white field, barefoot and clothed in shadow and flame.

A voice whispered.

"Daughter of flame and breath. Chosen by one who defied the ending."

The sky rippled. A great shape passed overhead with wings, but not of any bird. Something older. Watching.

I turned.

And saw myself aged, radiant, robed in starlight but watching from the edge of the field.

"You will lose many things," the older me said softly. "But you will never return to mortality."

I woke gasping, clutching the edge of the bed, my fingers burning with cold fire.

The world was sharper.

The lines of light around the curtains. The whisper of the floorboards beneath Ivar's pacing footsteps below. I could smell the rosemary still tucked in my braid. I could hear a fox yipping far beyond the hill.

I touched my chest where his blood had been. The skin there was warm.

I felt alive in a new way.

Different. Changed.

I arose.

Ivar had said I would still be me.

But I wasn't sure who that was anymore.

Sir Ivar

I heard her footsteps above.

Light, but deliberate.

She was awake now.

I stood at the hearth downstairs, watching the flame flicker low. My sword lay across the mantle. I had sharpened it twice in the last hour, though I knew it would do little against what hunted me now.

My kind bled. But we did not die easily.

Neither would the ones coming.

I reached into my satchel and drew out the silver-bound seal, an old charm, etched with runes in a language spoken only in the Dead Vale. It pulsed faintly in my hand. That meant they were near.

Three hours, perhaps less.

I closed my eyes.

There was no more time to hide.

The moment Rose descended the stairs, I turned.

She looked the same and yet her eyes no longer seemed to belong to someone who lived only in this world. There was knowledge in them now. Echoes of something that existed much larger than her own existence.

"Did you dream?" I asked her.

She nodded. "Of stars, and myself. Of something that knew me before I was born."

I exhaled slowly.

"It's begun."

Her brow furrowed. "What is?"

I crossed the room and took both her hands in mine.

"Your transformation will unfold in three stages. This was the first, the awakening. The others will come in time."

She didn't ask when or how.

Instead, she asked, "are your enemies coming?"

"Yes."

Her face did not pale. "Can we fight them?"

My heart ached with the pride I felt at her courage. "We can try."

She turned, moving to the fire and lifting the poker like a weapon, testing its weight. She didn't hesitate.

"Then let's not waste time."

Outside, in the Woods

They moved between the trees, six in all.

Shadows wrapped in skin. Eyes black with hunger.

At their head was the figure from the cathedral ruins, he walked barefoot, robes the colour of blood. Around his neck was a necklace of finger bones.

He stopped at the edge of the clearing, gazing toward the home where the firelight flickered faintly through the windows.

"She has taken his blood," he whispered. "And he has made his mistake."

He raised one pale hand.

The others began to fan out soundlessly and determined.

They would be at the door before dawn.

And they would leave with the girl or leave their dead bodies behind.

Rose

I heard the knock at the door. Not a real knock, no one polite comes hunting in the dead of night but something far worse it was a silence that pressed at the walls like hands in a choke hold.

Ivar moved before I could blink. One moment, he was beside me, his hand warm in mine. The next, he was at the door, sword drawn, eyes shining like iron struck with flame.

He didn't speak. Just looked back at me once, that old sorrow flickering in his gaze and something new.

Fear for my well being.

A window cracked inward near the back.

Glass splintered.

I turned, instinct faster than thought, and hurled the iron poker at the shape slipping through. It struck the figure square in the face.

It screamed not like a person, but like something made of archaic smoke and stone.

It hissed and fell back into the night.

Ivar grabbed my arm. "We have to move, now."

We burst out the kitchen door, into the garden where the rosemary grew wild and sharp in the moonlight. My bare feet hit the cold earth. Behind us, the walls of my family home lit up with fire.

One of them had set it alight.

My parents were gone, sent away earlier under a pretense of visiting the healer in the next village. Ivar had insisted. Now I understood why.

We fled into the woods.

The night swallowed us whole.

Branches whipped at my face. My breath burned. Ivar moved like he wasn't made of flesh, but light and memory. Silent. Fast. Always listening.

"They want your blood," he said over his shoulder. "Because I gave you mine. They think they can steal it back. Twist it. Use it."

I stumbled, caught myself. "Can they?"

"No," he said. "But they'll try anyway and if they break your will before your power roots fully....."

He didn't finish.

He didn't have to.

We ran until we reached the stone circle where he had changed me. It pulsed faintly now, runes glowing soft as embers.

Ivar turned, sword drawn again. His shoulders rose and fell with his breath.

"They'll come through the trees," he said. "Not from the sky. They hate what's above them."

He looked at me. "I'll hold them here. The circle is still charged. It'll protect you..."

"No."

I stepped forward.

There were voices in the wind now, whispers in tongues I shouldn't understand. But I did.

Something had changed.

Not just the sharpness in my eyes, or the way I could hear Ivar's heartbeat from three paces away.

It was deeper.

Older.

A hum beneath my skin. A thrum in my palms.

A memory that didn't belong to me but to something I was slowly becoming.

They stepped into the glade.

Six of them.

Tall and pale as bone, with eyes like drowned lanterns. Their leader wore robes of red and a necklace of finger bones that clicked faintly with every step.

"Little flame," he said. "You are not yet sealed. Come willingly, and we'll spare your knight."

"Go back to hell," I said, though my voice shook.

He smiled, and the others rushed forward.

Ivar met them head-on steel flashed, and screams could be heard.

But they were too many.

One slipped past, heading straight for me.

I backed toward the standing stones, thinking only to survive....

And then it happened.

The power I hadn't called but had been waiting for rose like the sea in a storm.

My hands lit with fire.

It was bright and hot.

I screamed not in pain, but in need for release and I flung my palms outward.

The creature lunging for me froze mid-stride and shrieked, caught in a circle of flames I hadn't seen until they blazed to life across the stone circle like veins of light.

It shattered like glass.

The others paused.

Even Ivar stared.

"You weren't supposed to do that yet," he whispered.

"Do what?" I breathed, my hands still aglow.

He didn't answer right away.

The red-robed leader hissed and raised his arms but the ground beneath him cracked, and roots twined up his legs like they had grown just to stop him from moving.

"Rose…" Ivar said, eyes wide. "You're not just bonded. You're awakening something ancient. Not just my magic but something else."

I looked down at my hands, which were dimming now.

"I saw her in my dream," I said. "A woman who looked like me. Older. Stronger. She said I wouldn't return to mortality."

Ivar lowered his sword, lips parted in awe.

"Gods help us," he said softly. "You're not just like me."

"You're much more than I realised."