The Dawn of Darkness || T. Riddle

Chapter 26: Love or Loyalty

Chapter 26: Love or Loyalty

FIRE. It scorched before her, lighting the skies with its tongues of fervour. She could feel the fire warming her skin but leaving no mark, as though the flames were dancing around her, clearing her a pathway so she could walk right through them. It was as though they were guiding her towards something in the distance, something faint that was calling out to her from beyond the fervent flames.

She walked through them, getting closer and closer to whatever was calling out to her with desperation. And as she came close enough to touch it - whatever it was - she reached out a hand to seize it, but it was snatched away from her. The beam of light was suddenly whisked away by a silent, black force that left her standing in a distant, dark void.

Suddenly, she was falling. Falling down, down, lower and lower into a pit that seemed never ending. She didn't know how long she was falling before she hit the ground with a thud, and when she came to her senses, she realised that she'd landed somewhere very familiar.

As her eyes adjusted to the sudden bright scene, she realised she was far away from the void of darkness in which she had been trapped. Here, no burning fires nor pits of blackness existed. This was a place of comfort. A place of warmth. A place of familiarity.

This was home.

Estela stood up in the centre of a living area, her head still a bit fuzzy from the fall, when she noticed a stream of moonlight lighting the large room with a pale sheen.

She looked around silently. She hadn't been here for years; this place she knew so well. Taking a few cautious steps at a time, she took in the polished wooden floors, the large curved staircase and the recognisable smell of home that she let flood into her lungs as she inhaled the scent.

She started walking through her old house, a smile inevitably etching its way onto her lips as she ran her fingers along the furniture. This was the place she'd grown up. The place that held so many memories. But now everything seemed odd. Everything seemed dated, the furniture and layout seemed slightly off as though it was an older version of her home from a time that she couldn't quite remember.

Then a sound made her freeze mid-step, and the sight before her made her heart almost stop in her chest.

"William!" A woman's muffled voice shouted from upstairs. "William, come quick, it's happening again!"

Not a moment later, the sound of bounding footsteps filled her ears as a man came charging through one of the doors to her right and ran up the curving staircase. This was a man she would recognise in a crowd of a thousand people, even though he looked different than usual. The man's signature large, bushy moustache was short and trimmed – though strangely no lines adorned his smooth, youthful face - and his movements were much more fluid than they were nowadays.

It was William, the man who had raised her. The man she looked up to more than anyone on the Earth. But it was his younger self. Estela was confused, it all seemed so real. But the way William was running up towards the voice that had called out to him made her desperate to follow him and didn't give her a chance to properly question what on earth was happening.

She followed him up the stairs, finding it strange that William couldn't see her even though she was standing right behind him. It was as though she was merely a ghost observing everything from some distant land, and as she followed him to his destination she found herself in a room that made hundreds of memories swim to the surface of her mind.

She was standing in a dainty little bedroom with freshly painted lilac walls and toy dragons and pixies dangling from the ceiling. There was a whitewash bookshelf filled with her favourite children's tales, and a small bed at the end of the room where a young woman with short brown hair was kneeling, her eyes pleading for William who went straight towards her.