The Lost Soul (English Version)

CHAPTER 05

Rayna stroked the cloth of her orange coat, trying uselessly to contain her nervousness. As soon as she entered the gate, she found herself in a macabre ravine full of fog. The trees were crowded together, as if forcing the woman to move on. There were random dolls hanging from the branches. She tried hard not to look at any of them.

She imagined that the gate would take her directly to Beneviento Manor, but she was wrong. She would have to walk a long way, and each step took her further away from her real goal, which had led her to that village. Taking advantage of the silence, the woman tried to make sense of recent events with her father. It was difficult, but she didn't want to give up.

Passing through the ravine, she saw two suspension bridges connecting it to the other side of the hill. The first led upwards, the other further down.

Rayna held her breath.

“This doesn't seem safe," she told herself. In fact, she couldn't get it out of her head that the woman wasn't safe anywhere. In the village, she was chased by agonized villagers. In the castle, she had been lusted after by half-females and one almost three meters tall - she really wanted to know how tall she really was -. So far, Dahlia was the only person she had shown any confidence in.

This motivated Rayna to continue.

The woman circled the place in search of alternative routes, but there was nothing. It seemed that the bridge was part of her private tour.

“Well done, Rayna. You can do it, just don't look down”

She held on tightly to the suspension ropes, hoping that by some miracle she would be able to hang on if the bridge fell. When she stepped on it for the third time, a piece of wood fell into the cliff. Her scream echoed off the cliff.

“Oh, God. Oh, God. It's okay, you're okay”

Rayna took a deep breath and kept walking, staring at a tree on the other side - she thought this would make her less terrified - until she reached the end of the bridge.

See? It wasn't that hard

She took a bottle of water out of her backpack and drank. If she succeeded, she hoped to recover her father's drawings before leaving the place. Now that she knew where Heisenberg's residence was, she thought she could get them back.

Rayna liked to be optimistic when she needed to be.

She walked straight until she passed an open metal gate and then a small wooden house. Although it was too dark, the only window allowed Rayna to see inside the place: thrown chairs, broken desks, and papers everywhere.

Curious, she thought, but it certainly wasn't Beneviento's house.

Behind the house, shovels and a hacksaw were lying on the ground. She held the bow in her hands. It was broken, and the dirt showed how long it had been abandoned. Whoever lived there worked in gardening.

This house has been uninhabited for a long time, Rayna thought.

The further she went, the more she understood why Dália hadn't gone through the gate with her. It was like being in a horror movie in which the directors worked day and night to deliver the ideal scenario and make the viewers develop permanent traumas.

She put her fingers under the sun. The woman only discovered that she had lost her wristwatch as soon as she entered the gate, so she had to tell the time the old-fashioned way. As her father had taught her when she was still a teenager.

“You have to move your hand downwards, until you reach the horizon line” he said, holding the fourteen-year-old girl's arms “Each finger means fifteen minutes, and your four mean one hour”