Elara's POV
I'm drowning in darkness, and I can't even scream.
Wake up! my mind shouts. Move! Do something!
But nothing happens. My arms won't move. My legs won't kick. I can't even blink because I don't have eyelids anymore.
Panic crashes over me like a wave. I try to breathe, but there's no air. I try to open my mouth, but I don't have a mouth. I try to see, but everything is black, black, black.
This is death, I think. This is what being dead feels like.
Except... I'm still thinking. Still aware. If I'm dead, why am I still here?
A memory flashes through my mind: Morgana pushing me. The sword piercing my chest. Blood everywhere. Richard's cold eyes watching me die.
The sword.
Oh no. Oh no, no, no.
I'm inside the Blade of Remembrance. The sword that killed me. I'm trapped inside the metal like a bug in ice.
I try to scream again. Nothing comes out because I have no voice. No lungs. No body at all.
Just consciousness. Just me, alone in the dark.
Help! I scream in my mind. Somebody help me!
Silence.
Time passes. I don't know how long. Could be minutes. Could be hours. There's no way to tell in this darkness.
Then I sense something.
It's like... warmth? Not temperature exactly, but a feeling. Something alive nearby.
Voices drift through the metal. Muffled and distant, but real.
"—shouldn't be in here, Morgana."
"Relax. The police already ruled it an accident."
They're still here! Rage explodes inside me. They killed me and they're STILL HERE!
I focus every bit of energy I have on those voices. On making them hear me.
MURDERERS! I scream into the void. *YOU KILLED ME! HELP! SOMEONE HELP!
"Should we take the sword out?" Richard asks.
"Are you crazy? That's evidence. We leave everything exactly as it is."
No. No, they're leaving. They're just going to walk away while I'm stuck in here.
PLEASE! I beg. I'M STILL HERE! I'M ALIVE! PLEASE DON'T LEAVE ME!
But they do. Their voices fade away.
I'm alone again.
And I realize something worse than death: I might be conscious forever. Trapped in this sword. Unable to move, speak, or die.
This is hell.
---
Time becomes meaningless.
I can't sleep. Can't eat. Can't do anything except exist in the darkness and think.
I think about Morgana's smile as she pushed me. About Richard's lies. About how stupid I was to trust them.
I think about my parents, who died five years ago. At least they don't have to know their daughter was murdered by her own business partner.
I think about all the things I'll never do now. Never get married for real. Never have kids. Never grow old.
Sometimes I try to feel the sword itself. I push my awareness outward, trying to understand this prison.
The blade is cold. Sharp. Ancient. And there's something else—something strange humming deep in the metal. Like a heartbeat that isn't mine.
What are you? I ask the sword.
It doesn't answer. Of course it doesn't. Swords can't talk.
Except I'm in the sword, and I can still think. So maybe the rules are different now.
More time passes. Days? Weeks? I have no idea.
People move my body. I sense them lifting me—the sword still stuck in my chest—and placing me somewhere. A morgue, maybe. Then a funeral home.
I want to scream at every person who touches me: I'M HERE! I'M TRAPPED! HELP ME!
But no one hears.
At my funeral, I sense dozens of people nearby. I hear crying. Sad music. Someone gives a speech about what a "brilliant curator" I was.
Morgana cries the loudest. She's so good at pretending.
I hate her. I hate her so much it burns like acid inside me.
After the funeral, something weird happens.
The world starts to... shift. Reality feels wrong, like looking through broken glass. The voices around me change. The language sounds different—older somehow, with strange words I don't recognize.
Then everything goes silent.
When I sense life again, the presences feel different. Not like humans I knew. These feel... I don't know how to explain it. Stronger? Stranger?
Where am I?
I try to understand what's happening, but it's impossible from inside this darkness.
Years pass. I know because I've learned to count. Count the seconds, the minutes, the hours. It's the only way to stay sane.
One year. Five years. Ten years.
People occasionally come near me. I'm in a cave now—I can tell by the echoes. Cold stone surrounds the sword.
I've tried everything to communicate. Screaming in my mind. Trying to move the blade. Pushing my consciousness outward as hard as I can.
Nothing works.
Fifty years pass. Then a hundred. Then two hundred.
I've been trapped for three hundred years.
Three. Hundred. Years.
I should be insane by now. Maybe I am. But I'm still here, still aware, still desperate.
Then, today—right now—everything changes.
Someone stumbles into the cave. I sense him immediately: male, young, hurt badly. His life force flickers like a dying candle.
"There has to be something here," he gasps. "Anything. Please..."
I gather every bit of strength I have left. Three centuries of loneliness. Three centuries of rage. Three centuries of desperation.
I push it all into one single thought and scream it directly at his mind:
"HELP!"
The man stops breathing.
"Who's there?" His voice shakes with fear.
He heard me. After three hundred years of silence, someone finally *heard* me!
"Please," I beg, making my mental voice as gentle as possible. "Pick up the sword. I'm trapped inside. You're the first person who can hear me in three hundred years. Please. I need help."
Silence. He's thinking. Deciding.
"What are you?" he whispers.
"A prisoner," I tell him honestly. "Just like you're running from something. We can help each other. Please. Just pick me up."
His hand reaches out. Slowly. Carefully.
His fingers wrap around my hilt.
And then—
EVERYTHING EXPLODES.
Light floods through me. Not regular light—magic light. Pure energy.
I can suddenly SEE through his eyes. FEEL through his body. His pain, his fear, his desperate hope—it all crashes into me at once.
And he can feel me too. Our minds slam together like two trains colliding.
He screams. I scream.
And for the first time in three hundred years, someone finally hears me scream back.