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The rain had been falling since dusk, a relentless sheet of water that blurred the world outside. Each drop slid down the glass in crooked trails, gathering into trembling beads before breaking and racing to the sill. The air smelled of damp wood and cold stone. Wind hissed through the alley, carrying with it a sound like distant whispers.
Fera sat on the edge of her narrow bed, knees drawn up to her chest, a thin blanket wrapped tightly around her shoulders. Her dark hair clung to her cheeks in loose, damp strands, and her skin — pale even in daylight — seemed almost ghostly under the flicker of the single desk lamp. Her eyes, large and deep brown, darted to every shadow in the room, as though each one might move.
Another clap of thunder cracked the night open. The window rattled in its frame, and she flinched, tightening her grip on the blanket until her knuckles turned white. Oh… what is this…? Oh, I… I’m afraid… she whispered to herself, barely able to hear her own voice over the rain. Her chest rose and fell too quickly. She could feel the tremor in her hands, the coldness creeping up her arms. “I feel… strange… sorry… trembling…” she murmured into the stillness, her breath uneven.
Her gaze kept returning to the small wooden box on her desk. She had found it that morning while searching through the old quilt chest — hidden deep at the bottom, wrapped in yellowing cloth. Its lid was carved with curling vines and strange, jagged symbols she did not recognize. She had only touched it once, but the moment her fingers brushed its surface, a sharp jolt of memory had struck her — not like remembering something, but like being dragged back into it.
She closed her eyes. She didn’t want to remember. But she always did.
Fera had never forgotten that night. The night when the world stopped making sense. The night she saw her mother — wrapped in red.
It was not the soft red of a silk shawl, nor the warm red of a summer rose. It was a dark, heavy red that clung to her like a shroud — red cloth stained with blood. The smell was the first thing Fera remembered — metallic, sharp, and sickening. Her small hands had clutched the doorframe as she stood frozen, unable to move, unable to breathe.
Someone was there in the shadows. A figure leaning over her mother’s still body, hands gripping a dagger. The blade slid into her mother’s belly one last time, and Fera’s voice caught in her throat before it could scream. The killer’s face — she could never recall it clearly, as if her memory blurred it on purpose — but the eyes, cold and pitiless, burned into her.
The figure turned slightly, and she stumbled backward, running into the darkness of the hallway. She didn’t remember how she got outside, or how long she stood there in the rain until someone found her. But by the next morning, she was an orphan.
Back in the present, thunder growled again, longer this time, as though the sky itself was warning her.
Fera’s heart pounded. The room felt smaller than it had a moment ago, the corners deeper, darker. The rain’s rhythm had changed — or maybe it was her ears playing tricks — because now it seemed to beat in uneven patterns, like footsteps approaching slowly across wet ground.
She shivered.
Her eyes flicked toward the far corner of the room, where shadows pooled like ink. “No,” she whispered, as if saying it aloud would make the fear vanish. But fear didn’t vanish. It crept closer.
The lamp flickered once, then twice, before holding steady. She forced herself to stand, her bare feet brushing against the cold floorboards. Her knees felt weak, almost hollow.
She stepped toward the desk. The box sat in silence, but it seemed to breathe — not in sound, but in presence. Her fingertips hovered over it, the memory of that night pulsing in her veins.
She thought of her mother’s voice, warm and soft in the rare moments before bedtime. She thought of the last lullaby she had ever heard, sung on a night when rain had also tapped against the windows. She thought of that voice falling silent forever.
Lightning flashed. In the glass of the window, she saw her own reflection — pale, wide-eyed — and for a heartbeat, another reflection behind hers. A tall, still figure standing in the dark.
Her breath caught. She spun around.
There was nothing there. Only the shadows. Only the sound of rain.
But Fera knew shadows could lie.
And somewhere deep inside her, she knew that whatever had happened the night her mother died… it had not ended. It had only been waiting.
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