Cold

At first, I thought it was fear.

I felt that familiar tug—the same one from that night—but this time it wasn’t faint. It wasn’t a warning. It was insistent. Methodical. Like invisible fingers testing where I might give.

It felt like something was pulling at me from the inside, while at the same time there was an opposing pressure—something trying to settle into me, measure the space, test my limits.

My hands stopped feeling like mine. It didn’t happen all at once. First they lost weight. Then purpose. I looked at them as if they belonged to someone else. My legs followed soon after. The ground seemed to exist only for other people.

I tried to think of something concrete.

My name.
A date.
A place.

Nothing held.

My darkest thoughts began to surface—but not as memories. They came neatly arranged, almost kind. Convincing me that I wasn’t enough, that I never had been. That loneliness wasn’t an accident, but a constant. That my life wasn’t going anywhere—and that it was fine for it to be that way.

Then those thoughts stopped feeling like mine, too.

They were whispers, but they didn’t sound external. They were complete ideas, rounded, without cracks. Echoes that didn’t argue with me—they explained.

The cold advanced without hurry, as if it knew it had all the time it needed. It didn’t hurt yet. It weighed.

I thought about screaming, but the thought slipped away before it reached my mouth. I thought about running, but the ground seemed to tilt in directions that didn’t exist. Up and down stopped making sense.

The world began to simplify.

Everything was becoming… comfortable.

Dark, but comfortable.

Like sinking into warm water.

Like closing your eyes after a day that went on too long.

As if the solution to all my problems, all the noise, was simply letting go.

For a moment, I considered it.

Then I felt warmth.

It didn’t come from outside. It came from within, as if something had answered a call I didn’t remember making. The cold pulled back just enough for me to breathe, and in that space a familiar presence appeared. Not clear. But known.

“Lor… can…”

I don’t know if I said it.

I don’t know if I thought it.

I can see him. Or I think I can. I can hear him, but I don’t trust my senses. His shape blends with memories that aren’t mine—fire tracing symbols, circles drawn with precision, a hand extended, waiting for someone to take it.

“Elena, I need you to pay very close attention,” Lorcan says.

When he touches me, the warmth changes. It’s no longer just relief—it’s an anchor. The cold retreats enough for air to reach my lungs again.

“I’m trying to keep it at bay,” he continues. “Stay with me.”

I want to say something. Nod. Hold on to his voice. But the memories start mixing again. I see a hill under the night sky. I see fire. I see eyes that don’t blink.

Are they mine?
Are they his?

The cold surges back, stronger.

This time it doesn’t probe.

It pushes.

I feel it driving deeper, as if it already knows where to break me. A brutal headache splits my skull, visceral and twisted, like something inside me is being forced into a shape it doesn’t belong in. I want to scream—but if I do, it won’t be me screaming.

The last thing I see clearly is Lorcan’s face. Focused. Tense. Too serious.

Is this how it ends? A stupid decision and a cosmic irony? Swallowed by the darkness I refused to forget?

Everything starts to fade again. I lose all sense of my body. With what little consciousness I have left, I think I hear his voice closer now, whispering at the edges of my mind.

“Trust me.”

I want to answer. I swear I do. But I don’t know if the impulse ever becomes sound—or if, once again, it gets lost somewhere between thought and tongue.

Time breaks.

I don’t know how long passes. A second. An eternity.

Then something changes.

The air grows dense. Heavy. It starts to hurt as it enters, as if every breath has to push through an invisible wall before reaching my lungs. I try to inhale harder, desperately. It doesn’t help.

Then it happens.

The air disappears.

I fight with everything I have, searching for oxygen where there is nothing. The pain is absolute. I feel my lungs contract, my chest burn, something inside me twisting at the same time—desperate to stay, to anchor itself.

Everything reduces to a single need.

Air.

Just when I think I can’t take it anymore—when the darkness is about to close in completely—the air comes back all at once.

Violent.

Cruel.

My throat burns as if I swallowed fire. My head splits open with an unbearable migraine.

I don’t understand what happened.

The last thing I manage to see, before losing consciousness, is a shadow consumed by flames.