𝐓𝐔'𝐁𝐔𝐑𝐍𝐈 ❧ bruce wayne.

𝟎𝟎 | 𝐰𝐡𝐢𝐬𝐩𝐞𝐫𝐬 𝐨𝐟 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐟𝐨𝐫𝐠𝐨𝐭𝐭𝐞𝐧.

          THE WIND whispered through the ancient birch trees, their silver leaves trembling under the moon's cold light. Somewhere in the distance, the low hum of the river echoed through the quiet night, its waters winding through time, carrying with them the weight of forgotten secrets.

The past lingered here, as if the very air held the memories of things long buried, waiting for the right moment to surface.

In the heart of the wilderness stood a grand estate, its towering walls once the symbol of an empire that stretched far and wide. Now, it was a ghost of its former self, cloaked in ivy and shadow, its halls echoing with the footsteps of those who were no longer there.

In one room, untouched by time, stood a portrait—an image of a family whose eyes seemed to follow you, their painted smiles belying the tragedy that had struck them down. It was said that their bloodline was cursed, marked by betrayal and loss, a curse that had seeped into the bones of the world itself.

But far beyond this place, through distant lands and war-torn fields, another story of sorrow lingered in the wind. A whisper of old wounds, of faces long forgotten, whose cries for justice were swallowed by time. The ghosts of the fallen—of families ripped apart, of innocent lives extinguished too soon—clung to the air, their presence felt but never seen. Their grief resonated with that of the cursed bloodline, intertwining across the centuries, as if the weight of such loss could never truly fade, no matter how deep it was buried.

Whispers of these tragedies drifted from one generation to the next, growing darker with each retelling. It was not simply the weight of power that had crushed them, but something far older, something deeper. Some said it began with a promise made in the dead of winter, others claimed it was vengeance for a forgotten sin. What was certain, however, was that those who bore the name were destined to suffer, doomed to live in the shadow of their ancestors' fate.

Maryam had always felt it—an invisible tether pulling her toward the unknown, a weight she couldn't name. She never believed in the stories whispered in her childhood, tales of a doomed family and their cursed legacy. But the dreams told her otherwise.

They came in relentless waves, visions of a life not her own: a young girl with haunted eyes, a family caught in peril, the sharp crack of gunfire splitting the air. Then, the flash of knives—a brutal end, their souls wrenched from the world in violence. Faces blurred, voices turned to echoes, but the feeling of impending doom was always the same, lingering in the silence after she awoke.

And within those nightmares, there were others—shadowy figures, silent witnesses to another tragedy, a pain that felt strangely familiar, as though their suffering mirrored her own.

In every dream, the shadows reached for her, pulling her into their depths, as if the past itself was clawing its way through the veil of time, demanding to be remembered.

She didn't know why the dreams haunted her, or why the image of that forgotten family seemed so familiar, as if she had known them once—long before her own life had begun. But as the days passed, the weight of it pressed heavier on her, drawing her closer to a truth she could no longer ignore. There was a secret buried in the past, tangled in the history of a once-great lineage, and somehow, she was tied to it.

The answers lay in the ruins of a forgotten dynasty, in the echoes of a curse that refused to be silenced.

Maryam didn't yet understand her place in the unraveling, but she would soon learn that the past had a way of catching up to those who tried to escape it.

And in the stillness of the night, as the wind carried the murmurs of the forgotten, she felt it—the weight of something timeless stirring, drawing nearer, as if the very air hummed with fate's unyielding thread.

Some destinies, she would learn, are woven too deep to be unraveled, etched in shadow and blood.