I froze, my hand hovering in the empty space where the necklace had always rested. Cold dread curled around my spine, settling into the small hollow between my shoulder blades. Who could have taken it? My mind raced through the possibilities, each one more unlikely than the last, and yet none of them made sense.
Was it my stepmother? Or perhaps my stepsister? But what motive could they possibly have? I had never kept a penny for myself—all the coins I earned from the tavern, all the sweat and aches of my body, I had given willingly, without protest. And yet... the one thing I truly treasured, the only fragment of my mother's love that remained, had vanished.
Anger swelled in my chest, hot and suffocating, until it became unbearable. I felt as though I might tear the whole house apart if I didn't find it.
I went first to my stepsisters. They sat together, whispering and laughing, and when they saw my expression, their smiles faltered only briefly.
"Have either of you seen my necklace?" I asked, my voice tight.
They exchanged glances, then scoffed. "Why would we want that ugly thing?" one of them said, wrinkling her nose. "It's old and dull. It doesn't even sparkle."
"It was my mother's," I snapped.
"And?" the other shrugged. "That doesn't make it pretty. Don't blame us just because you misplaced your junk."
Their laughter followed me as I turned away, my fists clenched so tightly my nails bit into my skin. There was only one place left to go.
My stepmother was in the main room when I confronted her, her hands busy with chores she barely noticed.
"Where is my necklace?" I demanded.
She looked up slowly, her brows knitting together in false confusion. "Necklace?" she repeated. "What are you talking about now?"
I felt something snap inside me. "Don't play dumb," I said, my voice shaking with fury. "You know exactly what I'm talking about."
Her eyes hardened instantly, the mask slipping just enough. She clicked her tongue and turned away. "You're imagining things again. Always making trouble over nothing."
"You took it," I said, stepping closer. "It was on my neck last night. No one else could have touched it."
She exhaled sharply, then finally turned to face me. "Fine," she said coldly. "I sold it. We needed money."
The words hit me like a blow to the chest. "You had no right," I whispered, my vision blurring.
"You don't get to tell me what I have rights to," she snapped. "Your work barely brings enough as it is. I needed more, and that trinket was useless to you."
"It was all I had left of her!" I shouted, my voice breaking.
She laughed, sharp and cruel. "Sentiment doesn't feed a household. If you don't like it, then work harder. Go back to the tavern. Make more money. And don't ever raise your voice at me again, or you'll regret it."
Her words lingered long after I turned away, burning into me like a curse. I left the room shaking, fury and grief twisting together until I could barely breathe.
The necklace was gone.
And with it, the last piece of my mother.
I left the house without a word, the weight of my stepmother's words pressing down on me like stone. The cold wind bit at my cheeks, but I hardly noticed. My mind was elsewhere, spinning in a silent storm of grief and anger.
People passed me without a glance, their lives brushing against mine for only a moment before moving on. No one noticed me. No one ever did.
With each step, my thoughts drifted back to the dream.
What if it hadn't been a dream at all?
What if that was how things were meant to be from the very beginning?
I wondered how life might have unfolded if I had been the one to die on that blood-stained day instead of my mother, if my first breath had never been drawn, if there had been no birthdays to forget, no years marked only by hunger and disappointment. Would I have been spared this slow, grinding existence? This endless cycle of hoping for something better only to be met with the same quiet misery?
Perhaps death would have been kinder.
The thought did not feel wrong. It felt... fitting.
Sometimes I wished Death were a person rather than an event. I would ask him why I was allowed to live when my mother was not. I would ask him if this life was truly my fate, or if it had been a mistake made long ago.
As the thought settled in my mind, something inside me shifted.
I felt a strange tightening in my chest, as though something unseen was reaching for me and yet could not, its touch heavy with despair. The sensation lingered, aching and incomplete, like a hand withdrawn at the last moment.
It was as if someone were whispering my name over and over again, desperate and insistent, but no matter how hard I strained to listen, the sound never fully reached me, swallowed by the space between us.
This was odd..
***
By the time I reached the tavern, the feeling had faded just enough for me to move again. The building loomed ahead, familiar and unwelcoming, its wooden sign creaking softly in the cold wind. I stepped inside and let routine take over before I could think too deeply about anything else.
I tied my apron, rolled my sleeves, and began working without thought. Cups were washed. Tables wiped. Trays lifted and lowered. The movements came easily, learned through repetition and necessity, and for a while, I existed only in motion.
The tavern slowly filled as the morning wore on. Voices layered over one another, low and steady, the kind of background noise that usually faded into nothing. I carried a pitcher past one table, then another, until a fragment of conversation brushed against my thoughts.
"...it wasn't there yesterday."
I paused near a corner table, pretending to scrub at a spot already clean. Two men sat hunched together, their heads bowed close, as if the words themselves carried weight.
"A church," one of them said quietly. "Dark stone. Old. Like it's been standing since king himself."
The other let out a soft, uneasy laugh. "You've had too much to drink."
"I'm serious," the first replied. "No one remembers it being built. It's just... there now."
I kept my head down, my heartbeat slowing as I listened.
"They say the doors never open," the second murmured. "Not for priests. Not for anyone."
The first man hesitated before continuing. "Not unless you're truly desperate."
My hands stilled.
"Desperate how?" the other asked.
The answer came softer, almost reverent. "The kind of despair that leaves you with nothing."
A chill crept up my spine.
"And if it opens?" the second man pressed.
The first exhaled slowly. "Then your prayers are heard, and you will be blessed"
"But you have to give something," he added at last. "Something precious. Something you can't replace."
I moved away before they noticed me lingering, my steps careful.
As I moved through the rest of my shift, the conversation stayed with me, drifting in and out of my thoughts. A dark church that appeared from nowhere. Doors that only opened for those in pure despair. Prayers that were heard, if you were willing to offer something in return.
It sounded ridiculous. Just another story made to pass the time, something whispered over cheap ale to make dull lives feel more interesting. I told myself that was all it was. People loved to talk, loved to exaggerate, loved to believe in things that gave their suffering meaning.
Still, I couldn't shake the feeling that it wasn't entirely false. I kept wondering what kind of offering such a place would demand. Money? I had none. Jewels? I had already lost the only thing I valued. The only thing I had left to offer was my life, one that was likely not even worth half a penny.
By the time my shift ended, my head ached from thinking. My body was exhausted, my hands sore and stiff, but my mind refused to rest. I untied my apron and stepped back into the cold evening air, the sky already darkening as I began the walk home.
The house was lit when I arrived, noise spilling out through the thin walls. When I walked into the main room, the noise hit me first, loud laughter, slurred voices, and the clatter of wooden pieces on the table. My father was sitting with three friends, bent over a game with bones and dice, empty cups all around them. Coins shined in the dim light as they were pushed across the table, and every roll brought cheers or curses. The smell of ale was strong and sharp.
I stopped in the doorway, my stomach twisting. Those coins were familiar. Too familiar.
My father threw his head back and laughed as the dice rolled. "Luck's turning now," he slurred, snatching up the coins with greedy hands.
"You promised you wouldn't play again!" I shouted, my voice rising over the noise. "I work day and night to keep this house, and you throw it all away on this!"
The table went quiet for a moment. One of the men snorted into his drink. My father didn't even look at me at first.
"Go to bed," he muttered, shaking the dice again.
"I worked for that," I said, stepping closer. My hands trembled, not from fear, but from the effort of holding myself together. "That was meant for food."
He slammed the dice down and finally turned to me, eyes glassy and unfocused. "It's just a game," he snapped. "I'll win it back."
"You always lose it," I said. "Every time."
His friends shifted uncomfortably, some avoiding my gaze, others watching with dull curiosity. One of them laughed quietly, shaking his head.
My father stood abruptly, the chair scraping loudly against the floor. "You think you're better than me now?" he barked. "Because you scrub tables all day?"
"I think you're wasting everything I earn," I said, my voice breaking. "I think you don't care what happens to us."
He stared at me for a long moment, then his mouth twisted into something cruel.
"You were a mistake," he said flatly. "Your mother should've taken you with her. At least then something good would've come out of that day."
The words hit me like a blow, sharp and unforgiving, leaving my chest hollow. For a long moment, I couldn't move or think.
Maybe he was right. Maybe I should never have been born.
My mother named me Adora. A name that should have meant love and care, yet it was given with a shrug, as if she already knew I would be ignored, forgotten, or blamed for everything that went wrong.
At first, I didn't know where I was going. My legs took me down streets I had walked a thousand times, but everything felt strange. The night was heavy and cold, and I was breathing hard. The city lights shone through the fog, but they didn't help, they only made blurry shapes and shadows. I ran without thinking, pulled by a hunger and a hollow need deep inside me.
I stumbled past alleys and side streets, past corners I knew by heart. My chest ached, my legs burned, but still I ran. The city was empty or maybe it was only me who felt that way.
And then, slowly, my eyes caught something.
At first, I thought it was a trick of the shadows, a play of light on the street. But as I drew closer, my breath caught, and my steps faltered.
There, across the street from the tavern where I had worked for years, stood a building I had never seen before.
A church.
Its stone was dark and blackened, ancient-looking, like it had been carved from night itself. Windows glimmered faintly, not with light, but with something deeper, something that seemed to absorb the world around it. The doors were tall, impossibly solid, and entirely shut, yet somehow inviting. My pulse thrummed in my ears. I had walked past this exact street every day for years. I knew it. There had never been a church there. Never.
And yet, here it was.
My mind refused to accept it.
My body wanted to step back, to run, to shake myself and wake from whatever cruel trick this was. But something inside kept telling me to step closer. Maybe the rumors had been true. Maybe there really was a place that appeared only to those who had nothing left, only to those whose despair was so complete it had no home in the living world.
I took a hesitant step forward.