The walls tried to eat her.
She kept running.
Bare feet slapped cold stone. The floor was slick in places, not just with blood. With old stains. Old memory. Her feet skidded and caught and kept going anyway. Her breath came out in short, shaking gasps. Her heart hammered too hard, too fast, and for a second she wasn't sure it was even her heartbeat anymore. It felt borrowed. It felt wrong.
She didn't know how she'd gotten out.
There had been no guards waiting outside the cage. No spell snapping shut around the bars. Nothing dramatic. Just the door.
Slightly open.
Like it had been left that way on purpose.
Like something wanted her to run.
Maybe it wanted her gone too.
Now her whole body hurt. Everything ached. Her legs were heavy. Her arms were weak. Her magic sat curled inside her like a dying ember, barely there. She could feel it, faint and small. She hated that it felt small.
But worse than that was the emptiness.
A hole under her ribs.
And inside that hole… the stupid, horrible longing for Lorian.
He hadn't come that morning.
Or the day before.
And a part of her—an ugly part—hated how much that hurt.
He's a monster, she told herself again. Over and over. But something in her didn't listen. Something in her still wanted him, still wanted his voice, his touch, even though she knew it ended with disaster.
With one of them dead.
Or worse than death.
"You're still wondering."
"How I did it."
"How deep it goes."
His words crawled through her memory like a knife. That smirk. That breath near her mouth. That power that bent the air like it was nothing and made her magic whimper and hide.
She had kissed a dead man.
And something ancient had kissed her back.
"No." Sylvera clenched her fists until her nails bit her skin. "Stop."
Stop thinking about him.
She shook her head hard, trying to throw the thoughts off, but the castle narrowed around her as she ran. The arches above seemed lower. The walls pulsed faintly. Veins of violet light crawled across the stone. The deeper she went, the more it felt like she was running through a throat.
Through something alive.
She started counting her steps.
Not to calm down.
Just… to remember she existed.
One. Two. Three. Left turn.
THUD.
A stone door slammed shut behind her.
Sylvera flinched so hard her shoulders jumped. She spun around, expecting guards, expecting him, expecting anything.
Nothing.
Just empty castle.
Just the ruin of a place trapped somewhere outside time.
She glanced toward a window.
The sky was bleeding rust. Like wounds. Like bad bruises spreading across clouds.
And around the castle, stretching into endless unknown, a forest loomed. Dark. Moving. Hungry in that quiet way.
Waiting.
The castle didn't accept her escape quietly.
She reached the final hallway—the one leading to the gates—and the shadows peeled from the walls.
Not normal shadows.
They slid out like skin coming off bone.
They came in waves.
First the courtiers. Lurching from doorways and alcoves. Faces half-rotted but still powdered white, still painted with noble rouge like they were pretending. Stitch-lines pulled their mouths into smiles they could no longer feel. They twitched like broken puppets. Their heads snapped toward her with a sharp jerk, too fast, too wrong.
Once human.
Once titled.
Now only puppets.
Lorian's puppets.
Don't stop.
Don't look at them.
Sylvera forced herself to keep running. She fixed her eyes straight ahead. If she looked too long, it felt like they would… cling. Like they'd get into her head.
Behind them floated the handmaidens. Ghostly women glowing faintly. Silent. Hollow eyes. Mouths opened in screams that never ended. Black tears slid down their cheeks and hissed on stone, smoking a little when they hit the floor. They drifted after her, soundless, trailing cold.
Then came the Husk Knights.
She heard them before she saw them.
Metal on bone.
A screech, jagged and high.
Then the smell hit: rust, rot, the sour stink of long-dead men.
They marched in formation. No flesh. No breath. Just haunted armour leaking mist from broken visors. Their blades dragged along the walls, sparks bursting. It sounded like war returning.
You waited too long.
You trusted the silence.
Fool.
Sylvera ran faster.
The castle changed around her.
Hallways narrowed. Lengthened. Buckled. The arches twisted, fanged shapes closing in. Doors slammed shut behind her with deafening finality. The floor cracked beneath her feet and tried to drop her into pits that looked too deep, too hungry.
But Sylvera didn't stop.
Pain screamed through her legs. Her lungs burned. Her magic flickered uselessly, raw and unreliable. Every heartbeat felt like borrowed time.
Still, she ran.
I am not his.
I will not die in that cage.
I will not become one of them.
Ahead—light.
The final gates were only a few steps away now, etched in blackwood, carved with screaming faces. The faces twisted as she approached, mouths shifting, eyes rolling in the grain.
She didn't hesitate.
With a feral sound she barely recognised as her own, she slammed her shoulder and her magic into the doors.
The gates exploded open with a sick crunch. Thunder breaking bone.
Cold air slammed into her lungs.
She stumbled out, gasping, shaking—
and froze.
The woods stretched before her.
But they were wrong.
No moonlight filtered through these trees. No soft shadows.
Everything was black. Not shadow-black. Malice-black. Bark like wet obsidian. Leaves whispering in a language that made her stomach twist. The ground writhed slightly beneath twisted roots.
The forest didn't feel alive.
It felt aware.
Watching.
Behind her, the castle screamed.
Not pain.
A command.
The stones trembled. Somewhere deep inside, something massive shifted.
Sylvera didn't look back in fear.
She looked back in fury.
"I'm not yours," she whispered.
Then she stepped into the woods.
The trees closed behind her.
Like a mouth.
Sylvera ran deeper and the forest got darker. Branches clawed at the sky like skeletal fingers. The little light behind her faded fast, swallowed by the thick canopy. Every breath she took was cold and sharp. Smoke and frost. It scratched her throat.
Her feet—already cut raw from stone—sank into damp soil with each step.
She didn't stop.
She couldn't.
But the forest started shifting.
A trail that looked clear one moment disappeared the next. A path looped back when it shouldn't. Turns repeated. The same dead tree showed up twice.
It wanted her lost.
It wanted her circling.
Then came the shadows.
Too tall. Too thin. Moving when nothing should move.
She didn't see them at first.
She felt them.
A presence brushing the back of her neck.
A phantom hand ghosting her shoulder.
Cold air touching her skin when there was no wind.
Every time she whipped around—
nothing.
No footsteps. No breathing.
Just trees. Just silence. Just that awful certainty of something close enough to touch her.
Keep moving. Don't stop. Don't think.
She forced her legs forward even as dread coiled in her chest like a second heartbeat. She had escaped the castle. She had escaped him. There was no going back.
Whatever the forest was, it had to be better than Lorian's cage.
Then she saw it.
A corpse lashed to a tree.
Not by rope.
By its own entrails.
Sylvera's stomach dropped.
Skin clung to bone in dry sick patches. The skull lolled toward her. Hollow eyes fixed on her, deliberate. Its hand was raised.
Pointing behind her.
Pointing back.
Sylvera stopped breathing.
It's a message.
Go back.
Her feet itched to turn. Her body wanted it. Wanted the familiar horror instead of the unknown one. But no. No. She knew this trick.
Fear dressed up like reason.
She'd fallen for that before. Golden lies. Kisses that tasted like fate.
He called it love.
She called it a fever dream.
Maybe the forest was worse. Maybe it chewed up anything that tried to leave his grasp. Maybe that skeleton had once thought it could run too.
Sylvera stared it in the face.
"I'm not turning back."
Her voice shook. She hated that it shook.
She stepped around it anyway, fists clenched, breath sharp, legs trembling. Past the bones. Past the warning. Into whatever wanted her blood next.
Because she wasn't just the girl who healed a dying man once.
She wasn't soft anymore.
She remembered the cage.
She remembered what love cost.
Then the forest breathed around her—thick with power—and sighed in Lorian's voice, soft, loving, hungry.
"Come home, little witch," it said. "The woods always give me back what's mine."
Sylvera stopped.
Her heart pounded.
Her throat tightened.
This wasn't escape.
It was another kind of trap.
She ran again anyway.
She broke through the forest's tangled grip and stumbled into a moonlit clearing. For one stupid breath she dared to hope. The sky opened above her. Stars cold and bright. The whispers fell silent behind her, like a curtain dropping.
She dragged in a shaking breath—
and the air turned to ice.
The temperature dropped so fast it stole the breath from her throat. Every hair on her body stood up. Something massive filled the clearing, pushing down on her skin, on her bones.
A figure emerged from the far side.
Too tall. Wrong.
Eight feet, maybe more. Its body wasn't solid. Shadows shifted and seethed, twisting into antlers that curled like dead branches. Its face didn't fully exist. It flickered, changing, never settling.
Its eyes glowed like embers sunk deep into hollows.
It stopped, looming.
It sniffed the air.
"You…" it rasped. The voice was low and scraping, bone dragged over stone. The sound wrapped around her. Held her. "You smell of Lorian."
Sylvera opened her mouth.
To deny.
To scream.
To do anything—
but it moved too fast.
A clawed hand lashed out and struck her across the clearing.
Sylvera hit the ground hard. The breath flew out of her. Pain exploded in her ribs. Hot blood trickled down her temple.
Her vision swam.
The monster loomed closer, hunched, shadows spilling from it like living things. Its breath reeked of rot. Of meat left too long. Of fresh turned earth over a shallow grave.
"His little pet," it hissed, taloned hand lifting.
Sylvera stared up at it, bleeding, shaking, fully awake.
"You should have never come here."