Chapter 381: The Cave That Remembered Blood

Chapter 380: The Cave That Remembered Blood

Sophia had learned to recognize the feeling before the world even finished dissolving.

It always began the same way — the soft hollowing of reality, as though someone had quietly scooped the weight out of the air. Sound dulled first. Then color bled thin, edges smearing like wet ink on parchment. Her body followed last, sensation draining from her limbs until she no longer felt the ground beneath her feet... or the breath in her lungs.

Watching.

Her stomach clenched as the familiar wrongness settled into her bones.

Again.

"Why..." The word left her mouth without sound. "Why is this happening again? Why now?"

Only moments ago — or what felt like moments ago — she had been running. The test had been ongoing in the forest.

But she had not even been able to start her individual test because of Holly. Sophia concluded that Holly was unhinged and blinded with jealousy, unable to tell what was real and what wasn’t real.

But she remembered everything. The sudden rupture of the air when the Trihydras emerged, massive and violent, splitting the quiet apart like glass under a hammer. She remembered the burning in her lungs, the way fear had turned her limbs reckless and fast.

She remembered trying to escape when the two Trihydras suddenly seemed interested in her.

Now none of that existed.

She was still in the forest, but she also wasn’t in the forest. Whatever she was seeing right now was in the forest, though.

The cold bite of wind against her face still existed.

She wasn’t asleep, though, so why was this happening? It only ever happened when she was asleep. But this was different.

Sophia stood in silence, surrounded by an emptiness that felt too wide and too still — a space that did not belong to the waking world.

She remembered the last time something like this had happened. She had seen Brynhild die in her presence, and she had to act fast to make sure Brynhild lived. Dread pooled in the pit of her stomach.

She hoped she wouldn’t witness any of her friends’ deaths. She hoped whatever this was—

She wasn’t able to finish the thought as her surroundings snapped into focus.

She stood before the mouth of a cave.

It was massive, its jagged stone arch rising like a gaping wound carved into the side of a mountain. Darkness pooled inside it, thick and heavy, swallowing light after only a few steps inward. The rock face surrounding the entrance was stained with old scorch marks and deep gouges.

There was a rock just by the entrance that looked like it had been... burnt? Sophia wasn’t sure.

The air smelled wrong, though. It smelled of ash and iron.

Something faintly rotten beneath it.

Sophia took an instinctive half-step back — though her body didn’t truly move. She existed like a ghost layered over the scene, untouchable and unseen.

Figures moved near the cave.

Strange people cloaked in dark fabric that swallowed detail, their hoods pulled low over their faces. They moved with disciplined coordination, not like scavengers or wild rogues, but trained — purposeful.

Her gaze snagged on the sigils stitched into their cloaks.

Her stomach twisted, and she frowned. The mark looked familiar, but she couldn’t remember where she had seen it. She was certain it wasn’t the Nightshade pack, so she wondered if it could be linked to her lost memories.

But even as the sigil was strange, something else caught her attention.

Movement erupted at the edge of the clearing.

A body slammed into one of the cloaked figures with brutal force.

Sophia’s breath hitched.

Ronan. 𝗳𝐫𝚎𝗲𝚠𝚎𝗯𝕟𝐨𝘃𝚎𝗹.𝗰𝗼𝗺

She recognized him instantly — the powerful build, the sharp angle of his shoulders, the way rage burned visibly through every line of his movement. His face was twisted in fury, teeth bared slightly as he drove his opponent backward with a ferocity that bordered on reckless.

Steel clashed, sending sparks leaping from the swords.

The sound rang loudly in the air.

Ronan fought like a storm given flesh, each strike fueled by something deeper than strategy. His opponent barely held ground, boots scraping against the snow-filled ground as Ronan pressed him relentlessly.

Sophia’s heart lurched painfully.

"Ronan..."

Her voice trembled.

Relief sparked — fleeting and fragile — at seeing him alive.

But she should have known that wasn’t all.

Her gaze shifted instinctively, scanning the chaos beyond Ronan.

And she noticed Sam.

She stood several yards away, her back pressed against a broken slab of rock, breathing hard, eyes wide with strain. Three cloaked men circled her, closing in like wolves testing a wounded deer. Her stance was defensive but unsteady — exhaustion visible in the tremor of her arms.

She fought back.

Hard.

But it wasn’t enough.

One of the attackers slammed into her side, driving the air from her lungs. Another knocked her weapon loose, sending it skidding across stone.

Sophia felt her nails bite into her palms.

"No, no—"

Her gaze flicked again.

And then she saw him.

Her vision sharpened as recognition slammed into her — Darek, the same person who had informed the pack of the tracks he noticed.

He was there.

Or what remained of him.

His body leaned heavily against a rock, blood soaking into the earth beneath him. Where his leg should have been was only a ragged, brutal absence — torn away so violently that the edges of cloth and flesh were still uneven, dark with drying blood. He shifted uncontrollably, the pain taking over him.

Her stomach twisted violently.

Sophia screamed.

The sound ripped through her chest, raw and strangled — but the world did not respond. No one turned. No one heard her.

Her scream vanished into the empty air like smoke.

Her hands shook violently as tears blurred her vision.

"This isn’t—this isn’t real..."

But her body betrayed her.

Her heart raced so hard it hurt.

Ronan shouted something — she couldn’t hear the words, only the strain in his voice — as he drove his opponent backward again.

And he didn’t see it.

Sophia did, though.

The shadow shifting behind him.

Another cloaked man moved silently, blade already lifted.

"Behind you!" she screamed, her voice breaking. "Ronan, behind you—!"

But he couldn’t hear her after all, and the sword drove forward.

Steel punched through flesh. Ronan stiffened.

His eyes widened slightly as the blade burst from his chest, dark blood spreading instantly across his tunic.

The man he’d been fighting laughed — a sharp, manic sound that cut through the air like shattered glass. He shoved Ronan backward, letting the blade tear free with a wet sound that made Sophia gag.

Ronan collapsed.

The laughter continued.

The cloaked man spat on Ronan’s fallen body.

Sophia felt something inside her crack open.

"No..."

Her knees buckled — though her body never touched the ground.

Around them, the battlefield fell silent one by one.

The Nightshade scouts lay scattered across stone and dirt, motionless. Blood painted the ground in chaotic patterns, darkening the earth until it looked almost black in places.

Sam was still alive.

Barely.

She dragged herself backward weakly, breath ragged, hands trembling as she tried to stand — but her legs betrayed her. She stumbled, falling hard onto her side.

She tried to crawl.

Her fingers scraped against the ground.

One of the cloaked figures turned toward her slowly.

Sophia’s chest burned as tears poured from her eyes.

"Run," she whispered desperately. "Please, Sam—run..."

But Sam couldn’t. She didn’t even hear Sophia.

Sophia’s tears spilled freely now, silent and helpless.

Then her gaze caught movement at the edge of the clearing.

A small child.

A little girl clung tightly to the leg of a strange man, sobbing openly. Her small hands twisted desperately into his fabric as she cried.

"Please... please come back," the child begged, her voice thin and cracked with fear. "We have to find my brother... he’s still out there..."

Sophia’s breath stuttered painfully.

The man was already dead.

Another of the cloaked men approached the girl and smiled.

"I’ll help you find your brother only if you help me find mine," he told her, and laughed.

The little girl glared at him, and he hit her. Sophia watched helplessly as the man abused the girl. She had no idea who the girl was. Now that Sophia was thinking about it, the bodies lying around didn’t belong only to the Nightshade pack members — there were strange people there too, their clothes unfamiliar, with only cloaks to protect them from the harsh weather.

Everywhere Sophia looked, there was death.

Red soaked the ground.

The air felt heavy and suffocating.

The only ones standing were the cloaked figures.

The only ones breathing were the monsters.

Sophia pressed a trembling hand over her mouth, her shoulders shaking as silent sobs wracked her chest.

"Make it stop, please. I’ve had enough. Make it stop," she begged, but it didn’t stop there.

"Hmm." She heard a voice sound from the cave behind her, and she paused and turned toward it.

The cloaked figures passed her and entered the cave, laughing as they did so.

Darkness swallowed them.

Something inside the cave shifted.

She wasn’t sure what it was, and before she could see it, she woke up with a gasp.