Chapter Text
The mountains always felt too big for the world Seren Albrecht lived in..
Their jagged silhouettes clawed at the sky, trapping the village in a bowl of shadow. Snow clung to the rooftops year-round, frost crept beneath doorframes, and the wind howled through the empty fields like something alive.
people jokes that the sun only visited out of pity.
Seren didn't mind the cold.
She minded the silence..
Her village was small--Too small- and everyone knew everyone's routines, mistakes, and family histories. Seren walked the same path each morning, boots crunching through hard snow as she carried water from the well and tucked her hands into her sleeves. Her coat was heavy, patched in places, and always dusted with frost by noon.
People greeted each other.
But they never greet her.
They watched her instead.
There was nothing strange about her, not really.. She was quiet, pale from the cold, with tired eyes that always drifted towards the sky. She worked hard, tended to the small garden behind her home, mended clothes, and rarely caused trouble.
But she saw things.
Not hallucinations. Not spirits.
Just... flickers.. Shadows that shouldn't be there. Bright spots in the corner of her vision. The feeling that something enormous hovered above her.., unseen.
The villagers whispered that she was touched by the old world.
Seren didn't believe that. She didn't believe much of anything. But when the wind blew a certain way, she felt something tugging at her chest- calling her.
A pull.
A direction.
A promise.
It had been getting stronger over the past month.
On this particular morning, she felt it more than ever. A persistent ache beneath her ribs, a whisper threading through her thoughts.
"COME"
She ignored it.. She always tried to.
She headed home with a water pail balanced against her hip, snowflakes clinging to her eyelashes, As she walked, she caught sight of the church doorway- old, abandoned, its bell long rusted away.
But something glowed faintly inside. A soft, golden shimmer. She froze, blinking.. Heart hammering. The glow flickered once more, then faded. She should have kept walking. She didn't..
Seren stepped toward the church, breath forming white clouds, boots echoing against the stone floor. It smelled of dust and old wood. Her fingers brushed the doorframe as she peered into the darkness.
"Hello?" she whispered. Her voice didn't echo.. Instead, something answered.
A pulse of light beneath the floorboards. Warm. Beckoning.. Alive. She swallowed hard.
The villagers were right about one thing; she always had been too curious for her own good.
She set the water down and knelt, finger tips brushing the wooden planks. The glow surged upward, spilling across her palm, curling between her fingers like a living ribbon of light.
Her breath hitched. It felt like it recognized her. That was the moment her quiet, cold life ended. That was the moment the relic found her.
Seren jerked back on instinct, but the light didn't let her go. It spilled over her skin like warm honey, clinging, sinking, seeping beneath her nails and into the lines of her palm. She gasped as the tingles shot op her arm- electric, numbing almost gentle.
Almost. The glow pulsed again.
"come.."
Not a word.
Not a voice.
Just a feeling- deep, primal, older then language.
The boards beneath her creaked, shifting under a force she couldn't see. Dust rose in soft spirals, illuminated by the growing golden light. The church suddenly felt too small for the brightness building beneath the floor. Seren's heartbeat thundered in her ears.
"This.. this isn't real," she whispered, though the warmth crawling up her wrist said otherwise. The light brightened. Her breath caught.
It wasn't just light, it was shaped- curving, twisting, forming patterns that reminded her of feathers, of wings, of something radiant and ancient pressing its presence against her skin
She knelt there frozen, unable to look away.
Her fingertips brushed the floor again- and this time, the wood split cleanly down the middle, silent as a snowflake landing. Beneath it was not earth or stone, but a cavern of shimmering gold, like the heart of the sun had been buried alive.
The glow surged upward, enveloping her hand, her arm, her chest.
Seren choked on a cry, but no sound came out. The warmth turned blistering, the sting sharp enough that tears pooled in her lashes. She tried to pull away again, but the relic- whatever it was- held on, tendrils of golden light wrapping around her wrist like fingers.
Her vision blurred.
The church dimmed.
Everything swayed.
The whisper came again- not a command this time, but a greeting.
Aurelien.
Her head snapped up.
The name wasn’t hers.
It had never been hers.
And yet… something inside her stirred like it recognized it.
She staggered back, clutching her chest as the light retreated suddenly, collapsing into a single glowing point below the ruined floorboards. For a moment, the church was silent again- cold stone, dead air, stillness.
Then the whisper returned.
Soft. Reverent. Unavoidable.
Come home.
Seren stumbled out of the church, breath shaking, fingers trembling violently. Snow flurried around her, but she didn’t feel the cold anymore. The world looked the same- the grey rooftops, the crooked chimneys, the familiar path back to her home- but it didn’t feel the same.
Something had changed.
Something had started.
Inside her chest, the warmth lingered like a second heartbeat.
Golden.
Unfamiliar.
Alive.
And as she hurried toward the village, she knew with a certainty she had never felt before:
The relic hadn’t finished with her.
It had only just begun.