Chapter 1 ☆ Remember
☆ The Things We Cannot Explain ☆
My dreams have been changing–not becoming clearer, but becoming louder.
For weeks, the same castle had filled my dreams–the same woman, the same child, the same desperate voice. Every night, the dream ended before I could understand it. Every morning, I woke with the same feeling: something important had been forgotten.
Something I should have remembered long ago.
The dream always began the same way.
Smoke.
Not the thick, black smoke of a fire. This was pale, almost translucent, drifting through bright stone hallways like living mist. It curled around my legs before twisting toward the ceiling.
The castle was beautiful–ancient, almost impossibly so, with nearly white walls catching the light of hundreds of torches flickering across the polished stone.
Somehow, I knew this place–not because I had been there, but because somewhere deep inside me...it already felt like home.
Then someone screamed.
People rushed through the corridors. Some cried, some shouted, and others prayed as swords clashed around me, followed by the thunderous crash of something enormous striking stone.
The floor trembled beneath my feet, and dust rained from the ceiling as smoke scraped down my throat, burning my eyes.
I had no idea where I was or what was happening, but one thing was certain.
We were running out of time.
Then she appeared.
A woman ran toward me, clutching a baby tightly against her chest. Her dark hair had come loose from the braid down her back, and ash covered her blue dress while tears and dirt streaked her face.
She wasn't merely frightened. She was terrified–not of what might happen, but of what she already knew was coming.
Her gaze flicked behind her before dropping to the baby, and her arms tightened around the child as it cried out. The sound pierced through everything–the screams, the clash of swords, the collapsing stone.
Everything.
I tried to move toward her, but my legs wouldn't obey. Nothing held me there, and yet I couldn't take a single step.
"Wait!" My voice cracked.
The woman looked up, and her eyes found mine.
For one impossible moment, everything disappeared-the smoke, the screaming, the swords, even the crumbling castle.
She was looking directly at me.
And I knew that face.
I'd seen it before, in photographs-a woman whose face had existed in my life only because someone had once told me who she was.
My mother...Adonis.
But I had never known her.
Not really.
I was seven months old when she died. Too young to remember the sound of her voice or the warmth of her arms. Too young to know what it felt like to be loved by her.
Yet when she looked at me, I felt it.
Fear still filled her eyes, but beneath it was something warmer, something impossibly tender-unconditional love.
The kind that didn't need words.
My chest tightened, and tears filled my eyes. "Mom?"
Her lips parted, and for one heartbeat, she looked as though she wanted to run to me, as though she wanted to hold me.
Then the castle shook violently.
A deafening crack split the air, and part of the wall collapsed behind her.
She immediately turned toward the baby, tightening her arms around the child. When her eyes found me again, the fear had returned. "You have to run!"
I shook my head. "I can't."
"Find Sinclair."
"Sinclair?"
She nodded desperately. "Find Sinclair!"
Another tremor rolled through the castle, shifting the floor beneath me and cracking a nearby column as people screamed somewhere behind us.
The woman looked over her shoulder, and her face changed. Whatever she saw frightened her more than the collapsing castle. "The Forgotten," she whispered.
I couldn't breathe. "Who?"
Her eyes returned to mine. "They're coming." Then she turned and ran.
"No!"
Whatever held me there seemed to tighten as I fought against it, but I couldn't move.
"Wait!"
She kept going, the baby's cries following her down the corridor along with the pounding of her footsteps against the stone. Around her, the castle was dying. Bricks fell from the walls, dust filled the corridor, and a section of ceiling collapsed with a roar.
"Mom!" My voice echoed after her as she disappeared into the smoke.
Then nothing remained but smoke, firelight, and falling stone.
A sound came from behind me-a growl so deep and ferocious that I froze. It wasn't human, nor was it anything I'd ever heard before. It seemed to come from inside the walls themselves, vibrating through the stone.
Slowly, I turned.
At first, there was only a massive shadow moving through the smoke. It grew as it approached. Then I heard its breathing.
I didn't want to see the rest.
It was looking directly at me.
Its growl vibrated through my chest, and a scream caught in my throat. The creature lifted one massive arm. Enormous claws emerged from the darkness and reached for me.
There was nowhere to run.
Something deep inside me screamed one desperate command.
Stop.
Silence.
The stone falling toward me hung suspended in the air. Ash hovered against my skin, while smoke curled beside my face and simply...
stopped.
Even the flames were frozen, their light caught in impossible stillness. My own heartbeat was the only sound left.
The creature's claws remained suspended inches from my face.
One step.
Then another.
My breath caught as I realized I could move while everything else remained still.
I took another step backward.
The creature moved.
Its claws came toward me again.
I jolted awake.
A gasp tore from my lungs as my heart slammed against my ribs, and for several seconds, I had no sense of where I was.
No castle.
No smoke.
No screaming.
No creature.
Only the dim interior of the car, the steady vibration of the engine, the smell of leather, and the rhythmic sound of tires rolling over the road.
I pressed one hand against my chest, trying to slow my racing heart. Then my arm burned.
I flinched and grabbed it.
Three thin scratches crossed my skin.
My breath caught.
I didn't remember getting them.
Outside the window, trees blurred past in the morning light, and for a moment, the creature's growl seemed to linger in the back of my mind.
My eyes closed.
It was only a dream.
It had to be.
Then, beneath the fading echoes of the dream, came something else.
A woman's voice.
Soft.
Barely more than a breath.
"Remember, Lees."
My eyes snapped open.
Nothing had changed. I was still in the car, surrounded by the familiar hum of the engine and the road slipping steadily beneath us.
Had I actually heard it?
There was no way to know.
Then a voice came from the driver's seat.
"Avelisse."
My uncle looked over at me, his expression warm, familiar, safe.
But the feeling remained.
Something had followed me out of the dream.
Something I couldn't explain.
Something I couldn't remember.
And somewhere in the back of my mind, one word remained.
Remember.
