Night in that place felt almost alive, as if the darkness itself was breathing slowly within the deep forest, while the wind moved through the tall trees like ancient whispers returning from a time no one remembered anymore. Inside a small wooden cabin far away from cities and villages, Raven sat silently near the dark window, his violet eyes staring into the void as if he was trying to see something that others could not see.
He was still young, yet the years resting on his heart were not the years of an ordinary child. They were heavy years filled with the shadows of memories that refused to leave him.
Within that silence his mind often returned to the old room where he had spent the first four years of his life. A room without light and almost without sound, where cold walls surrounded him like a silent prison without an end. In that place the night never truly ended, and nightmares came every single night as if something inside the darkness was watching him, waiting for the moment he closed his eyes.
Raven slowly blinked while his body trembled slightly. He was not asleep this time, yet the nightmares had become part of his awareness even while he was awake. Images appeared suddenly like dark flashes. Distant sounds. Shadows moving where shadows should never move. And sometimes a heavy feeling like falling into a bottomless abyss.
On the other side of the room Emma sat quietly on a wooden chair reading an old book beneath the calm light of a small lamp. She was about nineteen now, and as the years passed she had become calmer and more mature, yet she always kept watching Raven from time to time as if she feared he might disappear if she left him alone for too long.
She raised her eyes when she noticed his breathing change.
"Raven?"
He did not answer at first.
He continued staring at the darkness outside the window.
Then he spoke in a quiet voice.
"Emma… do you think darkness can remember?"
Emma stopped reading.
The question was strange, but Raven often asked strange questions.
She slowly closed the book.
"What do you mean?"
Raven stayed silent for a long moment before speaking again.
"Sometimes I feel like the darkness knows me… like it has been with me for a very long time… even before I can remember anything."
Emma didn't know what to say.
She knew his childhood had not been normal. Those four years had left wounds inside him that no one could easily see. But she never imagined those wounds were this deep.
She stood up and walked slowly toward him.
Her hand gently rested on his head.
"Darkness doesn't remember, Raven… but sometimes people fear it because they don't understand it."
Raven kept staring outside.
"But I don't fear it."
Emma smiled slightly.
"I know."
In truth she knew that very well.
Raven had never feared the dark.
Instead something strange always happened whenever he was in darkness. The shadows seemed calmer around him, as if the night itself stepped back slightly.
At first she thought it was only imagination.
But over the years she began to feel something was truly different.
Something she couldn't explain.
Raven sat on the floor near the window, pulling his knees slightly toward his chest.
His gaze was far deeper than his age.
And in that moment a strange sensation passed through his mind.
A quick image.
An endless darkness.
And within that darkness something was slowly moving… as if it was waiting.
Raven opened his eyes suddenly.
The image vanished.
Yet he remained silent.
Emma noticed.
"What did you see?"
He shook his head slightly.
"Nothing."
But inside he knew it wasn't nothing.
It was something real.
Something coming from very far away.
That night he could not fall asleep easily.
And when he finally closed his eyes the dream returned.
But this time it was different.
He was standing in a sea of darkness.
The sky was black.
The ground was black.
Even the air itself felt like it was made from cold shadow.
Then he heard a voice.
It wasn't a normal voice.
It sounded like an echo coming from the depths of time.
"It is not time yet."
Raven opened his eyes instantly.
His heart was beating fast.
But strangely… he didn't feel fear.
Instead he felt something else.
A strange sensation that felt like waiting.
On the other side of the room Emma was sleeping peacefully, unaware that this night was only the beginning of something far greater than anything a human mind could imagine.
Very far away… in a place that did not belong to the physical world.
A thin layer of darkness slowly moved.
As if something had awakened for a brief moment.
Then everything returned to silence once again.