𝙝𝙚𝙧 𝙘𝙖𝙣𝙫𝙖𝙨 • 𝙚𝙣𝙝𝙮𝙥𝙚𝙣 + 𝙨𝙚𝙫𝙚𝙣𝙩𝙚𝙚𝙣

𝗻𝗶𝗻𝗲

𝙩𝙝𝙞𝙨 𝙬𝙖𝙨 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝙫𝙚𝙧𝙮 𝙛𝙞𝙧𝙨𝙩 𝙥𝙖𝙜𝙚, 𝙣𝙤𝙩 𝙬𝙝𝙚𝙧𝙚 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝙨𝙩𝙤𝙧𝙮 𝙡𝙞𝙣𝙚 𝙚𝙣𝙙𝙨.

𝙢𝙮 𝙩𝙝𝙤𝙪𝙜𝙝𝙩𝙨 𝙬𝙞𝙡𝙡 𝙡𝙞𝙣𝙜𝙚𝙧 𝙮𝙤𝙪𝙧 𝙣𝙖𝙢𝙚 𝙪𝙣𝙩𝙞𝙡 𝙞 𝙨𝙚𝙚 𝙮𝙤𝙪 𝙖𝙜𝙖𝙞𝙣.

𝙩𝙖𝙮𝙡𝙤𝙧 𝙨𝙬𝙞𝙛𝙩 - 𝙚𝙣𝙘𝙝𝙖𝙣𝙩𝙚𝙙

Clara admits, she kind of knew already that she was going to be the first one gone in a thriller. She wasn't the smartest one, loving, courageous, or whatever the qualities of being a heroine truly capable of. Rather, she was more of the practical one. She usually tries to have an advantage in a situation, but now, she doesn't know what came to her mind when she was following the long, creaky stairs underneath the cupboard.

It was narrow, cramp, and suspiciously never taken cared like teh rest of the cabin. And judging by the sounds of the creaking of the old wooden stairs, it must have been poorly-made and built in a hurry. The odd thing was that despite the loud creaking of the stairs, no one from her family ever woke up from their long slumber, like this place was never meant to be discovered by someone else.

The walls of this passage was wooden at the start, but as she further descends through the long stairs, it became bare to the point that the passage was now walled with soil. But then the trail of the lit torches was now gone, leaving only an empty candle holders attached at the wall.

"Now what," she says as she plummeted to the ground, assessing her surroundings for anything that could be used to lit a fire in this empty space. "Wood, I need to at least find one. This place is getting rather cold."

There's still a wide area left unexplored in this passage, and the temperature drops every second she stayed in here without an ounce of warmth. "I'm Clara De Rossi! And I will not fall into depths of despair over some meager search of fire," she said as determination filled her spirits, and she bustled her way through the passageway while searching for any source of materials.

"Urk!" She clasps her hands over her mouth, stopping the vile vomit from her stomach and she realizes that her legs weakened as she was now in the floor scrambling to crawl away from the horrible sight. There were corpses - rather bones of what may have been soldiers from their kingdom - and there was a writing of some sort on the walls made by dried blood.

'RUN AWAY' is what she could decipher although some of it have been wiped away into a distinguishable mess. "What-" She manages to say as her eyes notices the torches that weren't lit were still in their bony hands. Horrible, what must have caused them to perish away in a disastrous manner. "I pray that all of the honorable soldiers may attain peace on the other side of the living."

"I am terribly sorry," she kept muttering as she removed the torch they tightly held that even when their mortal flesh faded away, they kept holding to them, a reminder to Clara that they still held for some hope. "I'm terribly sorry," she whispers to the air, maybe it was to the fallen soldiers, but she never knew for she have gotten far away from them with her newly lit torch in her hands and the prayers she kept playing in her head.

The journey for somehow at least for a light have come to an end when she realized, a large red dor was blocking her way. She searched for a key; underneath the door, maybe hidden from the large boulders, even in the pond of water that fell from the ceiling, but to her avail, there wasn't a key in her sight.

"Why wouldn't this door open!" She whined as she kicked it, and at last, she heard a click from it; it turned out that the door wasn't locked to begin with! Clara supposed that maybe she hadn't thought of checking it at first for it took her couple of minutes for nothing.

When she opened the door, it was like she had ventured into a new world. One that was filled with mysterious things; there was painting of some sort near her that when she came closer to look at them, the flowers at the painting bloomed, and the lady and the gentleman in the painting that had a matching hues of light purple and blues was dancing in the walls of what looked like the ballroom of the royal palace. A vase that was cream in color, made of porcelain, and the peculiar thing was that she swore she saw the roses in the vase kept falling down petal and petals of roses, but it grew back.

This time she plucked one, but it didn't regrow back unlike to what happened a while ago. "How odd," she said as she left the alluring roses, that unbeknownst to her, the trail of the rose petals followed her every steps, and the lingering feeling of the warm petals was still in her hands – a feeling that was once lost fluttered gently in her heart. Then Clara noticed the painting leaning to an old piano covered with what seemed to be like a silk fabric of a wedding dress.

And as the fabric softly fell from the painting, she gasped as she saw the same hazel eyes tinted with green in the painting. "It was us," she said as she observed it much closer; the painting was consisting of her and her husband looking at each other lovingly, his hands in her waist, the other in her hands, and she was staring at him the same, but she was leaning her forehead to his with a smile on her face.

"... embarrassing."

Clara muttered as she looked away from the painting with redness painted on her face, her heart thumping from the sudden fluttery feelings and a smile that wouldn't go away after she kept fanning herself to remove the sudden embarrassment she felt. "How preposterous! Utterly revolting!" Despite the way the vulgar words kept pouring out of her mouth, the redness in her face wouldn't go away as she even went redder when she remembered the way he kept calling her darling...