Blade

Chapter 76: Safe Haven

Blade

I can't breathe.

I can't speak.

I can't fucking move.

My lungs clamp down from the lack of oxygen, and my muscles seize so hard that I start to wonder if this is really how I die, crushed under the weight of something I can’t fight.

The shadow perched on my chest forces me deeper into the mattress. I can’t make out a face, but something about its presence feels familiar in a way that sends dread sliding through me.

I try to lift my hands, to shove the figure off, but my body refuses to respond. It’s like I’ve been locked in place.

The air thickens around me and a sharp ringing fills my ears as panic tears through every trapped inch of my body. My heartbeat crashes against my ribs, faster and louder, as if it’s trying to break free when I can’t.

The shadow leans closer. Its weight shifts, sinking into me until it feels like my bones might crack or as if I’m melting into the mattress, which I know makes no sense.

The confusion twists through me and I can’t tell what is real anymore.

My vision blurs at the edges. Spots gather. The room tilts.

I try to force my throat to open, to release even the smallest sound, but nothing comes. Just before the darkness swallows me whole, everything changes and I’m suddenly standing in a room.

Breathing hard, I look around and recognize my mother’s old bedroom in our family's manor. My hands are small again, my height lower, and I realize I’m ten years old once more. At the end of the large canopy bed stands my mother with her back turned to me, humming the lullaby she used to sing when I was very young.

This has to be some twisted game or a dream, because there is no possible way my dead mother is right in front of me alive, breathing and looking completely fine.

Those thoughts keep racing through my mind, but none of them stop the way my heart pulls toward her or ease the hollow ache spreading through my chest.

“Mamma,” I whisper.

She doesn’t respond. She keeps her back to me and continues humming softly, her fingers idly playing with the ends of her hair.

“It’s me… Blade.” I’m not even sure why I say it, since she should recognize my voice. But when her shoulders tighten slightly as I take a few steps closer, I feel compelled to reaffirm my words. "It's really me."

Her humming falters for a single beat. The silence that follows sends a cold prickle crawling under my skin. She tilts her head a little, just enough to show she heard me, yet she still doesn’t turn around.

I take another step. The floor creaks beneath my weight, somehow louder in the stillness of the room.

“Mamma… please look at me.”

My voice barely carries. It sounds young, almost fragile, like the version of me that existed before blood and violence stripped everything soft from my life.

Her hand drops from her hair. The humming stops completely. For a moment, everything seems to freeze, even the air.

Then she speaks.

“Blade.”

My name slips from her lips in a tone that is painfully familiar. Warm, gentle, exactly how she used to say it before she was forcefully and brutally taken from me.