The touch of heavy mildew and the scent of dust slowly dragged Silvia back to reality from her deep unconsciousness.
Her consciousness felt like fragments submerged at the bottom of cold water, floating upward bit by bit.
She struggled to lift her heavy eyelids.
At first, her vision was a blur of swaying double images and light spots, only gradually coming into focus after several seconds.
What met her eyes was a wooden ceiling covered in stains and cobwebs.
Several rough beams were exposed, their surfaces coated in thick, grayish-black mold.
A beam of moonlight shot in through a wide crack in the side wall, casting a ghastly white band of light on the dust-covered floor, illuminating countless motes of dust floating slowly in the air.
This was a dilapidated shack.
It certainly wasn't any building belonging to the academy.
Where... was she?
"You're awake."
A voice so calm it was almost indifferent came from the shadows on the other side of the room, where the moonlight couldn't reach.
Silvia whipped her head around, looking toward the source of the sound.
Professor Audrey Hope sat in the shadows on a lopsided, broken wooden chair.
She was still wearing her dark professor's robes, but they were now covered in dust and grass clippings, and her hair was somewhat disheveled.
There was no expression on her face—neither madness nor guilt. There was only an exhaustion that reached into her very marrow, and a sort of... numbness that came from casting aside all emotion after making a certain decision.
"Professor... Audrey..."
Silvia's voice trembled uncontrollably. "Where... is this? Why... why did you bring me here? What do you... want to do to me?"
Faced with the string of questions, Audrey only slightly moved her eyelids.
She slowly stood up from the chair and walked to the boundary between moonlight and shadow, letting the ghastly white light illuminate half of her face.
Her eyes remained hollow.
"This is... a woodcutter's cabin that was forgotten long ago."
Audrey's voice narrated flatly:
"As for why I brought you here... I'm sorry, Silvia. I... need to perform a ritual on you."
Silvia's eyes widened, her pink pupils filled with incomprehension and deeper fear. "What ritual...? Why? I'm just an ordinary student! I..."
"No, you aren't."
Audrey interrupted her, a tiny ripple finally appearing in her voice—a complex mix of awe, jealousy, and a certain twisted longing:
"The Light magic you used during the exam... that purity, that intensity... I know better than anyone what it means. You are the Chosen One. You are the vessel blessed by the Goddess of Light."
She took a step forward, the moonlight fully illuminating her face.
Silvia saw that within those eyes, which were always prim and serious, a fire of near-paranoia was now burning.
"I had no choice either, Silvia."
Audrey's voice suddenly spiked, cracking as the fire in her eyes flickered violently.
"The academy? The church? How could those high-and-mighty figures understand the heart of a mother! Why would they be willing to pay any price for a child branded a failure? Therefore, I can only do as they said and sacrifice you."
She suddenly pulled several small vials and a dark stone tablet engraved with complex patterns from her robes, her movements trembling slightly with excitement.
"The ritual... the ritual will be ready soon. You will help me, Silvia. This is... your destiny."
Looking at the total madness in Audrey's eyes and hearing those bone-chilling words, Silvia's heart sank to the bottom.
Despair, like a cold tide, drowned her last shred of hope.
Tears welled up in her eyes uncontrollably, blurring her vision.
She struggled desperately, but the ropes didn't budge.
She wanted to scream, but she knew that in this abandoned cabin in the middle of nowhere, no one could possibly hear her.
Just as despair was about to consume her—
With a sharp crack, dust and wood chips from above rained down like a storm!
"What?!" Audrey looked up in shock.
Silvia also instinctively looked toward the source of the noise.
One corner of the cabin's already precarious roof, along with several rotten beams, collapsed inward with a roar!
They poured down like a waterfall, creating a terrifying hole amidst the ghastly moonlight and the billowing clouds of dust.
The biting night wind instantly rushed in through the hole, blowing away the lingering dust.
The dust slowly settled.
A tall, slender figure stood quietly atop the pile of broken wood and rubble, backlit by the cool moonlight pouring through the hole.
He lowered his head slightly, his shoulder-length golden hair fluttering gently in the night wind, the tips of his hair dyed with the silver glow of the moon.
Though his face and body were covered in quite a bit of dust, making him look somewhat disheveled, that impeccable, handsome face and his currently slightly furrowed brow possessed a phantom-like unreality under the strange backdrop of moonlight and dust.
Greg shook his hands to clear them of wood chips, his amber eyes sharp as knives in the dim light. They first swept over the horrified Audrey, then landed on Silvia, who was tied to a pillar with tear-filled eyes.
"Looks like... I arrived just in time?"
Rate on N.U.
