Braving the Nights of Legacy: Part I (Venser)

[Verena Lorak]

Braving the Nights of Legacy: Part I
66th of Fall, 514 A.V.

Her eyes opened to a darkness she couldn’t seem to break through. She felt it tightening around her like a thick blanket. Suffocating her. Consctricting her. Her arms and legs thrashed around, but it was no use. The darkness pressed closer, threatening to crush her. With every beat of her heart, her body shuddered violently. There was no way to explain what was happening to her. The young woman had spent years of studying how the human body worked, but she could not understand this. Panic wrecked her as she struggled to breathe.

Surprisingly, the darkness unfurled.

A figure was standing on the other side of the . . . tunnel? She didn’t know what else to call the space that had begun forming around and in front of her. Even though she couldn’t see the face, she felt like she knew the figure. It was the most disturbing feeling, recognizing someone you could not put a finger on. The figure was waving her, yet he was enveloped in shadows.

Her legs moved without her control, having a mind of their own. She felt like a ghost, just hovering inside a shell that was her body. Everything moved without her command and she was brought closer and closer to the figure. At some point, she realized it was her father – Calamur Lorak. He who had died years ago, back when she was too young to remember much about him. A part of her seemed to have forgotten his face, but she could clearly imagine his strong voice as he made up his stories at night.

She had never thought of her father that much – it was not a surprise that she couldn’t properly remember his face. The young woman had never really gotten the chance to know her father. He was always busy with his political matters, barely spending any time at the plantation.

Uninvited, a memory surfaced in her mind, one she preferred not to.”Save him! Why can’t you save him?!” Her little hands shaking as she looked at her father’s pale face.

Finally, she was standing right in front of him. She didn’t even realize she was holding a knife. Yet, her hand knew it. With a disturbing ease, she plunged it into her father’s heart. She could feel the blade breaking through the layers of tissue, ripping through the heart’s muscles. She could feel the breath hitching inside the chest, the air escaping out.

Then she screamed.

Everything shattered around her like a glass box, the invisible shards digging into her skin. But there was no pain. Nothing but the pressure of something she couldn’t explain.

When she opened her eyes once more, Verena found herself standing in a familiar room. The place where she had spent countless hours in. But there was something wrong about it. The darkness too thick and the candles too bright. It was empty, hollow, as she turned to look around. The door was closed and she could see nothing outside the window. It was odd. There was always light out on the streets of Kenash.

The Lorak shifted her weight, an uneasy feeling settling inside her stomach.

One moment there was silence. And then there was chaos. Screams and groans suddenly exploded in her mind. As if in response to that, all the six beds available in the healing room were suddenly occupied. Her eyes roamed around in panic, trying to get a grip on the situation. Verena looked down only to see her hands covered in blood, her dress torn and painted in red.

She approached the first bed. A young boy lay curled on it, weeping like an injured animal. Her eyes were then immediately trained on his missing limb. His right leg ended with a torn stump where his knees were supposed to be. Blood was pooling on the bed, spilling down onto the floor where she stood. Yet, the boy still cared. It made no sense. He could not have lost that much blood and lived. What was this? Why couldn’t she understand anything? The healer reached out, wanting to help the boy somehow, but as she touched him, he screamed. The sound made her jump back, afraid of hurting him.

If someone had asked her, Verena wouldn’t be able to explain why she left the boy to weep when she would have done something to help him. She moved on to the next bed, dreading what she would be seeing next.