Page 149 of Cursed Dreams
She walked a few steps looking around, she knew this forest. She recognised these trees, this path, she had run it in her dream so many times. Her hear quickened as she began walking forward.
“Thalia…” Rodric murmured behind her, but she didn’t stop.
She walked faster. Then faster still. The path underfoot twisted through thick roots and winding trunks, but it never lost its clarityto her. Her heartbeat echoed in her ears, breath coming quicker. Sheknewthis path.
Her feet moved without needing to think, carrying her between mossy stones she’d passed before. A slanted tree with bark peeled in a spiral, a fork in the path where two thornbushes leaned toward each other like lovers. She ran now, her boots skimming over the earth.
“Thal, wait where are you going?” Nyla cried from behind her.
“This way,” she shouted, breathless. “There should be a clearing, this is where I always find him!” Her boots ponded the bath in an unforgiveable speed. She rounded the final bend ready to find Caelum waiting for her.
Thalia skidded to a halt, stunned into silence. Nyla and Rodric stopped behind her, both staring in wide-eyed at the scene before them.
There, nestled in the curve of ancient trees and crumbling stone, stood the ruins of a temple. Worn down by time, the once-proud structure was now open to the elements, its great domed roof collapsed in parts, its carved pillars cracked and leaning. Ivy climbed its bones, and golden moss spread like lace over the floor. At its heart, untouched by vine or weather, sat a raised stone altar. Resting atop the altar, carved with ancient markings that pulsed with faint light, was a sealed sarcophagus.
Thalia’s breath caught, a soundless exhale of disbelief.
She took a single step forward; her gaze locked on the stone lid.
The air in the ruined temple was thick with stillness, like the breath of time itself was holding steady. Thalia stepped closer to the stone sarcophagus at the centre of the temple, her boots crunching over broken tiles and moss-covered stone. The markings etched into the stone curled in ancient script she didn’t recognise, but something in her bones did. Her heart beaterratically as she reached out and ran her fingers along the edge, feeling the warmth of magic pulsing faintly beneath her palm.
Nyla came up beside her, eyes wide, staring down at the sealed sarcophagus. “What is this place?” she breathed, voice hushed.
Thalia didn’t answer. She couldn’t. Her mind was a whirlwind of thoughts, memories, and half-formed feelings. The path they’d just ran had been burned into her memory from her dreams. Every tree, every twist, every rise and dip in the earth had been exactly as she remembered. This was supposed to be the clearing where Caelum waited for her. But it wasn’t. It was a temple. A shattered, ancient place cloaked in power and silence, with the stone sarcophagus resting like a secret that had waited centuries to be found.
Rodric stood a little way off, his hand resting on the hilt of the sword strapped across his back. He hadn’t spoken since she had stepped into the temple, his gaze was watchful, protective. Thalia, turned to him confused “What do I do now?” she asked
A deafening roar cracked through the temple ruins, so loud it rattled the very bones of the earth. A roar her instincts told her was no animal, but a beast, a dragon.
“Thalia!” Nyla shouted, leaping in front of her, hands raised instinctively in defence.
Thalia’s heart froze in her chest.
Vaelith stepped into the ruins, emerging from the shadows of the broken archway like death itself. His cloak billowed behind him, his eyes shone molten gold, glowing with fury so bright they burned brighter than the sun. The heat rolling off him was palpable, his rage so intense, the very stones seemed to tremble beneath their feet.
Rodric stepped in front of them, sword drawn, stance wide. “Back, beast,” he growled, every inch the protector. “You come any closer and I’ll strike.” Thalia’s heart pounded in fear for her father. Vaelith didn’t even look at him at first. His eyes were on Thalia. His fury, his desperation, his pain, all of it lasered into her with such force it almost knocked the breath from her lungs.
“Thalia,” he said, his voice deep, ragged, strained. “You have to listen to me.”
“No,” she snapped, stepping around Nyla, fury crackling through her chest like lightning. “I’m done listening to you. I know what you are now. I know what you did. The dragons, your kind, cursed the High Fae. You erased them from history. You made sure no one would ever find them again. You are monsters! You killed my friend “
Vaelith let out another roar, one so visceral the trees outside the ruins shuddered. He paced back and forth in front of the steps to the sarcophagus, his control slipping by the second. “You’re wrong,” he snarled. “You’ve been fed lies, twisted truths. You don’t know what happened.”
“I know enough,” she shouted, pointing at the sarcophagus. “I know exactly who’s in there. I know who I’ve been dreaming of. He’s the one who will destroy you! He will give me my vengeance!” The words tore from her a storm of fury and rage.
“Thalia,”, “if you open that, you will unleash something you cannot control.”
“Control!” she hissed. “Thats all you think about, controlling people! You’ve lied to me, used me tried to control me since the beginning. He’s the one who set me free, who told me the truth! You’re the one who cursed him, to a fate worse than death” “andwhy? All because he and his kind tried to stop you, from taking power that wasn’t yours in the first place”
Vaelith’s eyes flared, and his body tensed like a coiled predator. “I didn’t curse him!” he roared. “You think I wanted this? That any of us did? We tried to stop it, gods, we tried. But your prince, your precious Caelum, it was him and his that -”
Rodric surged forward with a snarl, sword raised high.
“Don’t!” Thalia cried.
But it was too late.
Rodric charged forward, his blade swinging with raw fury and fatherly protectiveness, only to be stopped mid-stride. With a flash of deep black, shadows exploded from Vaelith’s outstretched palm, snaring Rodric mid-lunge and wrapping around him like coiling snakes. He lifted him off the ground and slammed him down with a thud that reverberated through the cracked floor of the temple. The sword skittered out of his reach.
