~LENORA'S POV
It started as a pressure in my chest.
Not pain. Not fear.
Just a quiet insistence like something had brushed against the edge of my awareness and refused to leave.
I paused where I stood, my fingers curling slowly at my side. The demon realm hummed as it always did, but this feeling in me felt different. As if the air inside me had shifted direction.
I drew in a slow breath.
Nothing was wrong.
And yet something was.
The sensation tugged gently. It was like a pull without direction and without reason, which made my skin prickle with my pulse stumbling for half a beat, as though my body had recognized something my mind hadn't caught up to yet.
My eyebrows knitted together as I pressed a hand to my sternum.
Why do I feel like this?
There was no voice. No image. No memory attached to it. Just the faint awareness that I was no longer entirely alone inside myself.
I tried to shake it off, forcing myself to focus on the present. The silk fabric of the bedsheet beneath my frame. The distant crackle of flame. The low murmur of a realm that never slept.
But the feeling was still there, like something had reached for me without touching me at all.
The bed felt suffocating tonight. My fingers traced the seams of the blanket before my nails dug into the fabric as my mind spun.
For days I had been confined, pacing, counting, testing the locks and listening. I hadn't seen either of the brothers since my last encounter with….Zephyr.
I thought of when he had taken me out of the chamber.
We didn't go far. Just down the corridor, through halls that swallowed sound and light alike. He hadn't explained why he took me out of the room. He hadn't looked at me once. I'd followed because there was nothing else to do.
I remembered how I'd tried to fill the silence with questions.
Where are we going?
What is this place?
Why me?
He answered some but ignored most and his response was brief and flat, as if the words were obligations he resented.
And I remembered how that silence had felt like he was holding himself back from something I didn't understand yet.
And that same silence followed me now.
No footsteps outside the door. No voices. No presence pressing down on the room the way theirs did. Just heavy silence, as if I had been set aside and forgotten.
The only ones who came were the humans.
Two of them.
And they never spoke to me.
At first, I thought it was ignorance, another way to remind me where I stood in this world. But the longer I watched them, the more wrong it felt. They moved when the door opened, stepped inside only far enough to place the tray on the table, then stood still with unfocused eyes, waiting.
Their eyes weren't fearful or submissive, but instead, they were empty.
Their gazes passed over me without recognition as if I were furniture, as if they couldn't see me at all. When I tried to speak them, wanting to thank them or to ask questions, there was no reaction from them. No flinch. No acknowledgment.
Just obedience.
I had realized they came only when commanded by something unseen which had sent them. And when their task was complete, they turned and left without hesitation, without curiosity, without a single backward glance.
These weren't servants.
They were walking shells.
Humans didn't serve demons here.
They were owned.
The thought settled slowly, heavily, until it pressed against my lungs and made it hard for me to breathe. A chill crept down my spine with dread pooling deep in my chest as the weight of that truth sank in.
I couldn't stay.
And now….the sheets caught my eye. They hung over the edge of the bedframe, thick, strong, and durable. If only I could just… just knot them together, create some kind of rope. Maybe, just maybe, I could climb out the window.
I bit my lip, staring at the sheets like they were a lifeline. Could I really do this? Could I climb, could I survive, could I escape whatever hell had claimed me?
My hands shook as I examined the sheets before tearing them free and began knotting them together. Each knot felt like a prayer, each loop a promise to myself that I would not remain a prisoner in a world I didn't know, and for an offense I didn't commit.
I glanced around the room, imagining the consequences of what I was about to do. If Zephyrus caught me again.…no, I couldn't think about that.
No more thinking. Survival instincts had to take over.
I tested the rope, tugging and letting my weight press against it. The knots held. It would have to be enough. There was no time for hesitation.
The window was narrow and high with a slick surface which was cold to the touch. I bit my lip. I could do this. I had to do this. I swung my legs over the edge, my stomach lurching at the height before I started to drop gently.
My fingers burned from gripping the sheets too tightly, but I descended slowly and carefully, inch by inch until my trembling bare feet met the solid ground that felt both alien and real.
I didn't pause. Survival instincts overrode every thought as I ran. I kept on running without looking back.
I didn't know where I was going, and I didn't care. What matters was that I put distance between myself and the huge mansion, between myself and the brothers, between myself and the constant suffocating presence of this demonic world.
My lungs burned. My legs screamed. My heartbeat thundered in my ears, and I began to pray desperately on my mind that my instincts were leading me somewhere safe.
While I was running, I noticed the change in the air—the scent of rot and smoke, the chill that pricked my skin, and the darkness which pressed around me like unseen hands.
Shadows lengthened unnaturally, and must curled around my ankles.
The first pale figure appeared slowly, a whisper of a human shape, eyes hollow with outstretched hands.
"Please….return my soul…"
I froze.
The voice didn't sound threatening. It sounded tired and broken, like it had been pleading for a very long time.
My feet moved again, instinct screaming at me to run, but more figures emerged from the mist, their forms bleeding into existence one after another. Men. Women. Children. Their bodies translucent, their faces slack with longing.
"Please…"
"Give it back…"
"Return what was taken…"
My breath came in sharp, shallow pulls.
They weren't looking at me like prey.
They were looking at me like an answer.
Soon the forest was crawling with them, dozens of ghostly humans with empty eyes and mouths moving in silent wails. Their hands reached out, brushing against my skin, tugging at my hair, and gripping my arms.
The moment my skin made contact with theirs, the forest reacted.
The mist thickened violently, swirling inward instead of drifting. The ground beneath my feet pulsed, a low tremor rippling through the soil as if something beneath the realm had stirred.
The spirits recoiled for half a second before surging closer.
Their whispers grew frantic.
"It's her—"
"She carries it—"
"We feel it—"
"No," I whispered, shaking my head. "You're wrong. I don't have anything. I don't—"
I shook my head, trying to convince myself I was beginning to lose the sanity I have left. No human should be seeing this.
Their clammy and cold touch burrowed into my bones. I could feel the pressure of dozens of souls pressing in on me, making my lungs constrict.
I shook my head again, gripping my hair hard. I'm insane. I'm losing my mind. This can't be real.
"No! No, I'm not yours!" I shouted, staggering backward, then forward, searching for anything solid, any escape, anything to ground me in reality.
Tears stung my eyes as I bent against a twisted blackened tree with ragged breathing.
"Return it... Give us back... Please..." At this point, I started trembling, my own thoughts blurring with terror. My fingers clawed at the bark as if it could anchor me to sanity. I had never felt so utterly powerless in my life.
Their touch wasn't just cold, it also pulled something inside my chest, as if tugging me toward them with an invisible thread. My sternum burned with a sharp, hollow ache that bloomed beneath my ribs.
I screamed.
The spirits screamed back.
The sound wasn't human. It wasn't demonic. It was a keening chorus that tore through the forest, rattling the branches, and bending the shadows inward toward me.
"I don't know you!" I cried, stumbling back. "I don't belong to you!"
But they didn't hear that.
They only felt me.
Their mouths opened wider, with their faces cracking with strain as the pull intensified, as if my presence had reignited something old and unfinished.
The pressure in my chest became unbearable.
Then—
Blue fire cut through the mist like a blade.
It started at the corner of my vision, a sharp, piercing light cutting through the mist which made me freeze with my breath caught in my throat.
Lucian.
He stepped forward, and my stomach knotted at the sheer authority he radiated.
The flames that danced around his hands weren't red like Zephyrus's, but instead they were deep, vivid sapphire, curling and slicing through the spirits with lethal precision.
I stumbled back with widened eyes. Blue flames... it's... impossible... how... My voice caught in my throat and I couldn't look away.
The last of the spirits dissolved into mist, their wails severed mid-cry as blue fire sliced through them without mercy.
Silence rushed in to fill the void.
Lucian didn't look at me and that alone terrified me more than the flames.
He surveyed the forest instead, eyes glowing faintly as they swept over the scorched ground, the trembling shadows, the way the mist refused to settle properly as though the realm itself hadn't decided whether it was finished reacting to me.
His jaw tightened, and that was when he turned with his gaze which landed on my chest.
My sternum.
The exact place that still burned like something had been pulled too hard and let go too fast.
I instinctively crossed my arms over myself which made Lucian narrow his eyes.
"You felt it," he said. His tone wasn't sharp nor accusing, but observational.
I hesitated. "I don't know what that was. They kept saying—"
"They would," Lucian replied calmly.
That stopped me.
He stepped closer, gaze still fixed on my chest, not my face, like he was reading something written beneath my skin.
"You shouldn't have drawn them," he continued. "Not without preparation."
My throat tightened. "I wasn't trying to."
"I know." The certainty in his voice made my pulse spike. "That is what concerns me."
Before I could comprehend what had happened, he was at my side. His long strides closed the distance between us. Without warning, he swept me into his arms in a bridal-style, as the forest receded behind us, with blue flames still lapping the mist of spirits fleeing.
I tried to speak, but his grip subtly tightened around me, a silent command for obedience.
The air shimmered around us, and in an instant we materialized in a room far more secured than the chamber Zephyrus had kept me in.
Lucian lowered me slightly, with his hand still pressed at the back of my neck. His eyes glowed deep sapphire as they pierced through the faint candlelight.
"You think running will save you," he said, calmly but the weight of his words pressed it on me. "You think there is a place to hide in this realm. You are mortal, Dove. You cannot outrun what watches you."
Tears stung my eyes, and I willed them away, blinking furiously to keep them from falling as my lips trembled.
The deep-blue glow in his eyes intensified, and the calm menace radiating from him was enough to make my knees weaken.
"I do not warn twice," he continued with an even tone which carried the sharp edge of danger. "Curiosity is a chain you cannot break. One more step like this, and the consequences will not be pleasant."
He released his hand from my neck, letting me feel the weight of my own failure and his dominance which lingered.
He moved toward the door, and my eyes followed him desperately, wanting a trace of reassurance, but he didn't look back.
He paused his hands at the doorknob, before his low voice carried over the room, "Some doors you open, Dove... you will wish you had left closed."
Then he was gone.
I sank and stayed huddled on the stone floor, as my chest heaved with my knees pulled tight. My mind spun with the remnants of terror, awe, and confusion.
The room was silent and cold, but the weight of what he had said, what he had done still lingered in every corner. I wrapped my arms around myself and whispered into the wall:
I have to try again. I can't give up. I'll find a way. I must...
But deep down, a voice echoed at the back of my mind saying; There was no escape from this realm, and certainly no escape from the Demon brothers.