A lone figure sat quietly atop a low mountain ridge, her eyes fixed on the overcast, the place where the sky should have been. Above her stretched nothing but darkness, endless, so thick and deep it swallowed all light. No stars, no moon, no sun. It was a space untouched by the normal phenomenon of day and night. Only darkness resides throughout time. No animal or plant can be found wandering except for black ravens that perched everywhere.
A figure approached.
"As silent as ever, Ravenna," the lone figure on the mountain ridge said suddenly, her voice calm. She didn't turn to look, but she detected the approaching figure whose steps were barely audible against the quiet terrain.
A soft chuckle answered her. "Still sharp as ever, Dahlia. It could've been any of the others, how were you so sure it was me?"
The figure on the ridge—Dahlia, didn't respond. She simply shrugged, her silence speaking louder than words.
Ravenna sighed as she reached the top of the ridge, coming to stand beside her. "That's just like you. Perceptive... and wordless." She said and her eyes followed Dahlia's gaze upward, toward the thick overcast of shadow that had long since consumed the sky.
"I used to wonder what lies beyond that," Ravenna said quietly, a curious longing lighting in her eyes. "I know there's more out there. Places beyond this one. Places where you came from… and maybe where I came from too."
She continued fixing her gaze as her voice trembled slightly. "It is odd, these overcasts are just like the normal darkness we are here now but why can't our eyes see through it? I have trained my eyes to an extreme that sometimes I think to myself, I should already be able to see things beyond darkness, like the master can. I thought that if I focused long enough, hard enough, I might pierce through the fog. But no matter how I tried… it is always like my eyes are clouded. Like more shadows that are almost infinity."
She sighed again, more heavily this time, and glanced sideways at Dahlia.
"You must feel it too, don't you? That longing of seeing and knowing what is above?"
Still, Dahlia said nothing.
Ravenna continued, her voice softer now. "I've been here since I was five years old. That's younger than you were when you arrived. You came here six years ago—you were fourteen. I was just a child."
This caught Dahlia's attention. She'd always known Ravenna was the first of them, she hadn't realized how young she'd been.
"How did you get here?" Dahlia asked this time in a voice low. Obviously, her curiosity had been sparked.
Ravenna shook her head. "I don't know. But I did know I wasn't here before I was five years… and the next, I was."
"Do you remember anything? Your family, your life before?"
At the question, Ravenna's brow furrowed in confusion. "You should know, right? None of us remember anything from before. That's how it's always been. Or… are you different?"
Dahlia hesitated, then shook her head. No words followed.
It was the first time she'd asked after anyone else's. Until now, she had always kept her thoughts to herself.
"Don't you think that's strange?" she asked.
"You mean how we don't have our past memories?" Ravenna tapped a finger to her lips, thoughtful. Then she shook her head. "No. Not really. It feels... normal."
But Dahlia was strangely surprised.
Of the eight disciples under their master's care, Dahlia had always been the most distant. There were six women, with Ravenna being the seventh. They had all been here before her. These women had looked down on her, with irritating gazes they shot at her always from a distance away. And though Dahlia had preferred keeping to herself and hadn't been bothered.
Even then, only Ravenna had reached out to her, and had looked after her. The only one who did.
Dahlia had asked Ravenna her questions even though she knew they were short of their memories, but she hadn't expected that none of them would be without any curiosity at all.
It's obvious that none of them had really wondered what their lives before here had been. Dahlia thought to herself.
She knew that each of them would have put thoughts together before and figured out that their memories had been wiped intentionally, their pasts erased, leaving only this dark world as their beginning. And knew who had done it, but had not cared.
This was the handiwork of their master; that she knew for certain. The master had done her work so well that any feelings of doubt and resentment from them for what she had done were totally filtered, replaced with an undying trust towards her.
She had been a victim too, at least for a short time when she came. That was the design. But for some unknown reason, Dahlia's memories had regained themselves. She still remembers the world outside. Her mother. The past. The light.
She glanced at Ravenna again, wondering about the life she might have lost. Was it a life worth remembering? Or one better forgotten? There had always been a softness in Ravenna, a warmth that felt motherly at times. Yet beneath it lay a strength that could turn deadly if provoked.
"Do the others also never question it?" Dahlia asked.
"Question what?"
"Why are we here? Why we remember nothing."
Ravenna scoffed. "No, they don't. None of us did." She said and looked at Dahlia again. It was obvious that she found Dahlia strange today. "Only you did at this moment."
"But you should know the others, they Revere master too deep. You should realize this from how they treat you."
Dahlia nodded. It wasn't just indifference from the other six. It was resentment. The others saw how Master favored her, how she singled Dahlia out for special training, more attention, more time that it bred jealousy. Contempt. Isolation.
And Ravenna? She was the only one who never seemed bothered by it.
"You don't feel the same as them?" Dahlia asked, curious. "About Master, I mean."
Ravenna opened her mouth, then paused slightly. "It's not that simple. Everyone reveres Master in their own way. Mine just… isn't like theirs."
Dahlia said nothing, but she understood. Or at least, she thought she did.
Ravenna quickly shifted the topic. "Anyway, I came to bring you a message. Master has summoned you."
She turned to leave but paused a few steps away. Her voice floated back over her shoulder.
"I hope you're still with us after the test. I've always liked having you around."
Dahlia's eyes flickered and her heart suddenly thudded in her chest. She understood what Ravenna meant—far more than Ravenna likely realized.
The "test" wasn't a trial of skill or strength. It was to test the master's compatibility with her body.
Master had gathered them. Trained them to meet her intentions. She had been searching for a vessel—a new body to replace her dying old one. But it couldn't be chosen randomly, it must be one that her soul was fully compatible with, one she could conveniently inhabit without issues.
The seven, including Ravenna, had not met the demands, which had frustrated the master. But when she found Dahlia, something changed. A joy had bloomed in her, subtle but unmistakable.
At first, Dahlia was oblivious to the arrangements. But later… she did understand.
Her breath quickened. Reaching into the folds of her robe, she drew out a necklace—moon-shaped, delicate, and worn from years of secret contact. She held it against her palm, her fingers trembling.
She was frightened, really frightened that her knee weakened.
"Mother," she whispered, her voice cracking, "your child needs you now… are you still with me?"
Memories surged—warmth, light, loss. Tears blurred her vision as her heart ached with unspoken sorrow.
"I know I didn't deserve you," she murmured. "I never did. I was immature in my deeds but maybe… maybe someday you'll forgive me."
She lowered herself to her knees, clutching the necklace tightly, her face buried in her hands as she wept—silently, for a truth only she knew. A truth she could never forget.
—
Dahlia walked silently along the narrow, shadow-drenched garden path, her footsteps muffled by the damp earth beneath her. The path led her to an alleyway that opened up into a wide veranda, veiled in its usual cloak of darkness. Yet tonight, something about the shadows here felt heavier—thicker, as if the air itself bore weight.
But that never stopped her. Darkness was not a limitation, it had long since lost its grip on her senses. Here, all of them could see through the blackest pitch—every flicker of motion, every detail hidden in gloom without illumination or wall touches. It was their nature.
She walked a short mile before the veranda ended abruptly at a towering stone wall, seemingly a dead end to any ordinary wanderer. But Dahlia wasn't a wanderer, and this wasn't her first time here.
She stepped closer, running her fingers delicately across the finely carved patterns etched into the stone. Her hand paused at a rough, almost imperceptible edge. Without hesitation, she slipped her fingers into a narrow, hidden hole, feeling for the familiar lever inside. With a soft slide, she pushed the lever upward and then deeper.
Swish.
A low rumble followed. Dust hissed from the cracks in the wall as the stone wall groaned against the ground, splitting open and sliding inward.
Dahlia coughed, raising her sleeve to shield her nose. She peered into the hidden stairwell that had appeared. Narrow steps twisted down into the bowels of shadow. She felt her breath quicken. Her heart pounded, but she forced herself to calm. Just a little further beyond is her master's lair.
She exhaled heavily, squashing her nerves, and stepped down. One step. Then two. Then three. Soon, she reached the bottom and emerged into a broad, open hollow where the darkness was exceptionally dense that it clung to her skin like wet cloth, pressing against her body as if it could be held in her palms.
Her eyes settled on the lair ahead.
It was her master's domain, nestled deep into the hollow's wall. Everything about it screamed of ancient, twisted magic. Animal hides were draped over the roof like discarded skins, thick smoke puffed from within, and the air reeked of burnt herbs and bitter potions.
Dahlia scanned the surroundings as if she'd never seen them before, in a trance, that she didn't realize how long she'd been standing still until a voice cut through the silence.
"You've come. Do you plan to simply stand there like a tree?"
The voice was dry and cracked—aged like leather soaked in fire.
Dahlia flinched.
"S-sorry, Master!" she called out, her voice echoing across the hollow.
Without wasting another second, she hurried forward and slipped into the lair.
Inside, the air thickened. The atmosphere was just as expected. Suffocating, creepy, scary, charged with a presence that pricked her skin. The lair wasn't large in any way, but it overflowed with strange, ominous details. The walls were smeared in blood, scrawled with cryptic runes that bled. Dozens of tiny gourds hung from knotted ropes, swinging lightly in the stale air.
The ground was a mess of feathers. While some had been freshly plucked, many were faded and brittle, all scattered across. It was clear that cleanliness had never been a concern in this lair.
As Dahlia entered, her cheek brushed against a mounted animal head. Blood still trickled from its mouth, a slow, steady drip onto the ground. Dahlia barely blinked. She was unfazed, having grown used to these grotesque decorations and ritualistic relics her master kept for reasons she never fully understood.
She remembered when she had fallen into a quicksand and lost consciousness, when her eyes had opened again, she saw herself in this dark space. The darkness was so complete and absolute that she couldn't see a thing. She had cried out for her mother, terrified and alone.
Then came the hands.
Withered and cold, they had seized her head. Whispered mutterings slithered through the blackness that was before her and spoken in a language she couldn't understand. Those words had curled into her mind and struck her unconscious.
When she awoke, the world had changed.
She could now see clearly. She could feel the shadows as part of her life. But her memories… her past… were murky. At the time, it had felt like her identity had been wiped clean. The only thing she knew as clear as anything was a name—Hecuba. Her master.
Dahlia sighed quietly at the thought. Six years had passed since she arrived. It had only been through some unknown miracle, the memories of her life before this place had returned itself. They clung to her mind like threads fraying in the wind, fragile but unbroken.
Her gaze swept across the room until it landed on the woman crouched by a cauldron afar—her master.
Hecuba was hunched over, her bony hands busy adding vials and powders. Her hand ran over an old large stone table beside the cauldron, littered with the cracked vials, dried petals, bone fragments, and blood-filled calabashes.
"Master," Dahlia called softly, bowing her head.
"Hm." The old woman didn't turn.
She continued her brewing in silence, grabbing one vial after the other, emptying them into a thick concoction she was busy with. Then, finally, she wiped her hand into a beast skin and spoke.
"You've come."
"Yes," Dahlia replied, her voice calm—though every muscle was wound tight.
Hecuba turned at last, her sunken eyes gleaming with strange delight. She swiped her hand through the air, and with a shimmer, a pearl appeared in her palm.
With one eye squeezed shut, she peered through it at Dahlia, her face twisted in intense concentration.
Dahlia stood still. She knew this process. She had been summoned like this before and examined, scanned. And each time, Hecuba would eventually frown, shake her head and mutter, "Just a little more…"
She never knew exactly what she was being scanned for, but she had her suspicions. It was all part of the process, a preparation of her body for the day Hecuba would be ready to take it.
And Dahlia feared that day more than anything.
She watched now, heart drumming, as Hecuba stared through the pearl. There was no muttering this time. No frown.
Instead, the old witch's eyes widened. Then she grinned.
A wide, unhinged grin that sent a chill through Dahlia's bones.
Hecuba let out a cackle, tossed her hands in the air, and began to dance wildly, shouting:
"Mama, Mama Me! It has come! My work has bloomed! HAHAHA!"
She spun, laughed, and howled with manic glee.
Dahlia stood frozen, her skin pale, her hands trembling. A bead of sweat rolled down her temple as her master's celebration rang through the lair.
This was it.
The moment she had always feared.
What can I do? she thought, her breath shallow.
She had always known the day would come. She just didn't wish for it.