Winwolfa (A Roan x Female OC Fanfic)

Chapter 81

Stinging bile was the first sensation when Astrid woke. Immediately, whatever little contents in her stomach ended up in a warm pile on the dirt floor. Cheeks covered in it. Her body writhed in excruciating pain from everything.

From remembering it all.

She felt everything. The emotional distraught and despair. Cold chains, cold stone floors. Just... cold. Freezing temperatures that burned in her skin.

A guttural scream scratched at her throat. The only way she could relieve it. Pieces of her heart snapped as she saw their faces, mutilated and shredded. Her mother and father. With their remains in between the teeth of a bloody smile.

A smile she used to love.

She couldn't breathe. Every inhale felt like glass. Shredding her lungs with each hopeless cry. Similar to those final moments. Hair like moonlight and eyes like the stars, he watched with a sick pleasure as they hauled her away to somewhere unknown.

Lines between reality and memory began to fade. Glimpses of the past flickered into the present. She could feel the cold hands on her body, holding her down. She fought, twisting in their grasp and failing her limbs. Dragging her down, down, down.

Until finally, she twisted free.

Fight or flight, Astrid ran. Bare feet sprinted through empty halls and dark forests. Adrenaline was the only thing keeping her body upright. Whether it be from her past or present, she wasn't sure, but she didn't care. It was the only thing that would save her from the unknown enemies.

Astraea was right. This hell she was reliving, the hell she was subconsciously sprinting from – it something nobody could possibly imagine. And honestly, Astrid was more than qualified to be the judge of that.

Thorns and stones embedded themselves into her soles. Scrapes and scratches marked onto her skin. That reminded her of who she was, the person she left behind, dripping along her pale skin.

The only blue blood to exist in the universe.

Something he made sure of 400 years ago.

But Astrid, she was alive. Despite everything the universe threw at her, she was alive. Dug her way out from her coffin, just to be buried again. Healing wounds that only resulted in more scars. More fights. More death.

It was the price she paid for the massacre she ensured over 400 years ago.

To live a life full of guilt, of remorse and torment. A constant reminder of the things she had done. Of the person she had to become.

Astrid felt her heart ready to leap from her chest. In a body that was not hers. Zigzagging through the trees like prey. To where, she didn't know. It was the impulse that was leading her now. Leaping and bounding over protruding roots and fallen bodies. Blue blood and shadows decorating the floor.

Her bleeding feet skid along the dirt, fumbling her way into a dark corridor. Hands scraped against the floor as her momentum flung her into the narrow crevice. A hall, a cave, or somewhere in between. The cool stones that numbed her soles were the same, regardless. Air in her lungs squeezed, out, out, out as she was pinched between the stone walls.

Whatever footsteps that trailed behind her were long gone now. Their voices nothing but distant echoes in the wind. Desperate to stop in the present, feeling the muscles in her legs ready to break, Astrid continued to follow her memory.

Oxygen filled her lungs again as she slipped out of the damp cavern and into a glen. Purple hues of the morning dawn greeted her vision. Tears stung her eyes at the sight. Birds sang and grasses swished at her ankles, and a temporary feeling of hope filled her heart.