It felt like hours. It could have been minutes. Time was strange here, thick and slow like ink, slithering around her ankles.
She kept walking. And walking. No walls. No floor. No time. Just shadow after shadow, memory after memory—And no end.
A part of her wondered, what if she was still asleep? What if this was it? What if she'd never wake again?
The voices danced through the dark like smoke. Not shouting. Just close. Too close.
Do you remember the first cut? Was it worse than you expected? Or exactly what you deserved?
Annie did not flinch. Not this time.
But her fingers curled into fists at her sides.
Then, another voice. Not like the others.
Smooth. Calm. Serene in its cruelty.
"Tell me, girl… are you afraid of the dark or of what it reveals?"
Annie exhaled, slow and controlled. "Is that supposed to be a riddle?"
"You have walked through fire, through pain, through chaos. And still, you cannot name what you fear most."
The voice moved. No direction. No source. Just presence.
"Do you fear your power? Or that it will never be enough?"
Annie tilted her chin. "I came here for answers. Not to be toyed with."
A chuckle, low and unsettling. "Oh, but you are a toy. Carved, reshaped, passed around. And now, held close by chaos like a talisman."
The shadows curled tighter.
"You hide from your bond. Not because it hurts, but because it asks too much. Even now, he does not feel what you feel."
Annie's jaw clenched.
"I'm warning you."
"You warned the others too, didn't you? And still, they carved you. Deep. Deeper than they should have. Deeper than anyone else. They wanted permanence. Obedience."
Annie's composure cracked just a little.
"Show yourself," she said, voice sharp. "If you are going to psychoanalyze me, you can at least look me in the eye."
Silence.
Then movement.
The darkness folded.
And out of it stepped Leyla.
Half shrouded in veil like shadow, her figure flowed with the shifting smoke, elegant, weightless, and impossible to define. Her skin shimmered like onyx under moonlight, her eyes a night sky full of stars that watched instead of blinking. Her hair curled behind her like tendrils of living mist.
She looked young.
She felt older than silence itself.
She walked barefoot across the black, her form never quite touching the ground.
"I thought you would be louder," Annie muttered.
Leyla smiled. "You thought I would be kind."
She circled slowly, then stopped in front of her.
And reached.
Her hand hovered above Annie's right forearm, the first rune. The one carved by her priests. The one Annie remembered most clearly: the sting, the chanting, the rawness.
Leyla's fingers didn't touch, but the air shifted. The rune burned softly under the skin.
"They made sure you'd never forget," she said quietly. "They made sure, no matter how far you ran, your body would remember the pain."
She looked up, eyes piercing through layers of memory and magic.
"And now you come to me… not to understand it. But to master it."
Her lips curled into something that might have been approval.
Or warning.
Leyla circled her slowly, like a scholar studying a rare relic, or a predator contemplating something almost worthy.
"Most who bear my mark," she said, "wake screaming. Their minds fracture. Their dreams rot from the inside out."
Annie didn't speak.
"But you… you walk with your nightmares like old companions."
Leyla stopped in front of her again, tilting her head.
"How?"
Annie's voice was steady, even. "Because they were not new. Just… louder."
Leyla's lips twitched. Not quite a smile. Not quite approval.
"You survived what was meant to break you," she said softly. "And that... that makes you dangerous."
Leyla lifted a hand again, shadows gathering like breath around her fingertips.
"There is magic inside you, dormant, poisoned, wild. You could burn a hole through realms if you unlocked it."
Annie swallowed, but didn't flinch.
"What kind of magic?"
"Old magic," Leyla said, stepping closer, her breath cool and dark. "The first kind. The original kind. Born from silence. Not evil, honest. It reveals, strips, tests. It unmakes."
"And you think I have it?"
"I know you do. Because it knows you."
Leyla's eyes flashed, soft starlight behind obsidian.
"But you don't trust it. Just as you don't truly trust the gods you think you've chosen."
Annie's jaw tightened. "I trust Malvor."
Leyla's voice lowered, dark and velvet.
"Even chaos casts a shadow, my dear."
That landed like ice in her spine.
But she didn't back down.
"And what about you?" Annie asked. "What do you want from me?"
Leyla stepped back, the shadows coiling behind her like wings.
"You want answers. Power. Freedom from the voices that echo when you close your eyes."
"I want to control what is inside me," Annie said.
Leyla tilted her head, considering her like a fracture waiting to become a fault line."You speak like someone who's already lost control once."
Her voice dropped."You want to master your power? Good. Because there will come a day, sooner than you think, when you will be the only thing keeping the Pantheon from burning."
She turned."And you will have to choose whether to save it…Or let it die."
The air thickened. Shadows rose like smoke around Annie's feet, tendrils curling up her legs, wrapping gently, weightless and cold.
"One test," Leyla whispered. "You pass, I will give you a truth no one else will. A memory carved out of your mind by those priests. A key to your own beginning."
Annie's breath hitched.
"And if I fail?"
Leyla's voice was soft. "Then the shadows will know you lied to them when you said you were not afraid."
The floor beneath Annie vanished.