Page 76 of Whisper of Nightmares

Euphemia stares.

She has never seen anything like it. Not even in the fevered nightmares that have haunted her for nearly a year.

Then she notices the source of the dripping. A strange, green substance that oozes from the vertebrae rafters and sizzles as it lands on the stone ground.

Pressing herself flatter against the door, Euphemia contemplates fleeing this place and facing the nightmare again. But its garish whinnies taunt her from the other side of the door. Its low sniffs and grunts dare her to come out. To face it.

Euphemia squeezes her eyes shut. She’ll just have to wait this out. Eventually, she has to wake up. Right?

“Wake up. Wake up. Wake up,” she chants to herself.

A gust breathes from inside the bone palace, as if in mocking answer to her. And in it, a voice. Not words spoken, something more like hissing laughter.

Euphemia snaps her mouth closed.

Her body stiffens.

Eyes unblinking.

At the small of her back, her hand fumbles for the doorknob. But she cannot find one.

Frantic, she searches, keeping her shoulders taut and her eyes fixed forward, searching for the monsters that surely must be lurking nearby. But there is no doorknob to be found.

She is trapped.

“One does not enter Náströnd…and live to tell the tale.”

She should’ve listened to Ash. Should’ve heeded his warning at all costs.

Why must she be this way? This is precisely the reason the nightmare hunts her. It knows her soul is corrupt. Knows how easily she can be swayed by the slightest curiosities.

And now it has cornered her here, perhaps intentionally so.

Perhaps this was the fate she was meant for all along. The reason she keeps having these recurring dreams. For her to end up here.

For whatever reason, it’s that thought that eases the tension in her chest. Something like a burden lifted. If this is meant to be her end, so be it. She will face this fate with the honor of a soldier, just like her father.

Suddenly, a scream tears from the belly of the bone palace.

Incoherent.

Guttural.

Frightened.

Fear gnashes into her stomach again. Someone is in trouble.

Not just someone, though.

That voice. It’s difficult to hear it clearly as it ricochets against the bone walls, the cries muted by the wheezing breaths of this dreadful place. But somewhere amidst her fear and disgust, Euphemia thinks she might know who those screams belong to. She’s been haunted by them on her darkest nights, and oftentimes well into her days. Screams that remind her of her guilt. Her grief.

They belong to her father.

Not a single rational thought could stop her from diving into the mouth of the beast now.

Euphemia bolts.

She catapults over masses of skeletons. Her feet slide across the slick, fibrous ground. Mandibles crack underfoot. Only one thought careens her closer to peril: She will not fail her father.