A QUEST OF DEATH : Dawning Darkness

03 | The Rose(edited)

When she fled Crepusculem seven winters ago—with nothing but a torn dress, a fractured heart, and memories sharp enough to bleed—Ada Romersai had carried little hope for the future.

She had been hurt beyond words, humiliated in ways she never dared to recount, and the power simmering inside her felt as volatile as her grief. It rattled her bones. It made her feel like a danger to herself and the world. She had wanted nothing more than to disappear—to slip into the void and dissolve, unseen and unmissed.

Now she walked through a narrow alley, the cool, damp breeze brushing against her skin and raising shivers along her spine. Serenel had always been a place known for its stubborn stillness—resistant to change, resistant to time. Some called it boring. Predictable. Eternal.

And in a way, they weren’t wrong.

The walls stood the same as they had years ago, untouched by war or magic. The sea beyond them still breathed in its old rhythm, unchanged, unbothered. Even the evenings remained damp and unforgiving, swallowing sound and colour alike.

Ada followed the familiar path alone, her footsteps soft on the wet stone.
Nothing had changed.

Not even her.

It took her quite some time to realise that running away wasn't the solution; sometimes you just had to accept it, bare it and move forward.

She was just as exceptional as her brother, if not more so. They dreamt of protecting their family's legacy and their world together.

Just one bad decision had wrecked it all for her. There was no turning back now, no matter how hard she tried. It had turned into her harsh reality. Still, it wasn't easy for her to make up her mind to live with it.

A familiar tingling sensation blossomed at the base of her palms. It slowly travelled down each finger, passing every crease with a remark until it threatened to shoot out from her very fingertips. Curling her slender fingers she hid them in fists.

It had been an exhausting few days, negotiating the terms of her existence, hoping that someday she would find her way back to the place she called home.

The morning's baby pink blush had faded, revealing the subtle imperfections beneath. Her once sleek black skirt had become slightly wrinkled, and her flowing pink silk top clung less gracefully to her form. Her dark brown locks cascaded freely down her shoulders in a more relaxed manner.

Those elegant high-heels, which had earlier added a touch of grace to her appearance, now felt like a burden with each step she took on her way back home. She halted for a bit, slipped them off, and stepped onto the bare ground, slinging her slippers over her shoulder. The rough cement ground was nothing new against her bare feet as she staggered forward in the cold, lonely alley.

She was nearly at her doorsteps when a presence made itself known behind her. It manifested as the sound of a tin foil hitting the ground and an abrupt burst of chilly breeze.

While an ordinary person might dismiss it as a stray cat rummaging through bins on a cold autumn night, she was anything but ordinary. She paused the music playing through her earphones, and spun on her heels in a slow, steady circle, scanning her surroundings.

She was faced with the damp alley walls. No one, as her instinct had told her, was to be seen there. The alley stood empty, with an old brick wall rising from either side and a row of smelly garbage cans as silent witnesses.

She suspected it was one of those mischievous creatures from the Dark Side attempting to provoke her. It had always been this way, even after leaving the City of Sins: Salvathre, even after setting the boundary clear, settling in a distant town like Serenel where magic wasn't as frequent as in Crepusculem. The usual buzz of the city could be heard beyond the walls.

Her doubts were confirmed when, suddenly, another sharp, icy gust of wind rushed past her, brushing against her shoulder. While it was indeed a cold, damp evening, this particular gust felt as if it had blown straight from the Arctic itself.

Her own elongated shadow stretched along the alley, cast by the flickering orange neon of a nearby billboard. For a change the shadow stretched on the cobbled appeared distorted, far from normal. Where it should have been a solid, uninterrupted darkness, there were instead absurd patterns of tiny dots of light.

It was as though her body had been riddled with punctures, allowing slivers of light to seep through. Ada knew for fact that she hadn't had such holes all over her body; it sure had to be one of those lowly Night Walkers attempting to feed on her energy.

Ada froze, her body electrified by a sudden surge of cold sweat and fear. Her muscles tensed, rendering her immobile. The air around her turned frigid, as though the alley air was forming to build an iceberg. She felt lightheaded and shivers coursed down her spine, causing goosebumps to rise on her skin.

It had already started feeding on her.

The same tingling sensation returned, starting at the base of her palms and racing down her fingers like sparks catching fire. The untamed energy coiled within her, ready to explode like a ticking bomb. Oh, the thrill—and the danger—of harboring even a fragment of a foreign soul.

Of course, the remnants of the cursed darkling’s soul were aware of its enemies. Neither her body nor the borrowed soul had the power to disobey it.

For the second time that evening, Ada clenched her fists, knuckles whitening. Her only goal was to escape—not to trigger a catastrophe that could obliterate an entire town if she lost control.

Fighting against the paralysis that threatened to claim her, she drew on her dormant energy, thawing her limbs and propelling herself forward. The trick worked; sensation returned to her legs, and she sprinted down the narrow, dimly lit alley, ignoring the pain blooming in her soles.

A/N: This story is being edited. If you read Luna Sanctum anywhere and then see Crepusculem instead just know it's the same place.