What happens in Amaaralva, stays in…

Aralyn’s POV

Suddenly, the forest was encased in dreadful, ominous silence. And then I felt it. My mother died. The only sound I could hear was my breath and his eerie footsteps as he quickly approached his next target - me. My breath, his footsteps and my faltering heartbeat, as my strength was ebbing again. I felt like I was on my deathbed, grasping for the last atoms of my being. Like a cadaver-to-be taking its last breath before demise.

And then, out of nowhere, I felt my heartbeat again, rejuvenated somehow, but now it felt as if my heart was down to my heels. My heart was beating so loudly that it felt like the beat of my heart would burst my ears. And it increased every second of my desperate attempt to escape my executioner…my father. He wants me dead; that was clear as a day. That sudden surge of unknown energy crawled, slivered, and transferred into me as if giving me a new lifeline. And then it came. Darkness. A pitch-black pit that I started to fall into encompassed me entirely.

Everything stopped and went black. Am I dead? Felling like someone waking up from a comma, I sensed that newly surged energy had started to tick wildly throughout my being. It seemed that I spent an eternity in that dark oblivion, but I was lost for less than a second. With every second passing, this newly surged energy enriched me and pulsated through every pore of my being. I have become fiercer and stronger as it ticked and ripped within me. It had driven me into the ink-black ambience of oblivion at first, but now it gave me more strength to get through this. It felt cold but, at the same time, warm and familiar, charged with love. I realised it was my mother's essence that was bleeding into me. With every second, this new fuzzy feeling became a new beat of my heart, more powerful. It restored me, giving me new stamina and a reason to keep fighting. It felt like I was reborn into a new self. My mother's shadows encased me, and for a second, I had a feeling like they were to throttle me. I started to shake and freeze from the dark and freezing feeling that rippled and ravished my body. I felt them lingering and rolling beneath my skin, running deeper under it to ground and instil deep inside me. Her power was dark and cold. But also, inexplicably, very warm.

Unfortunately, her power also served as a beacon, lighter and warmer than the sun, directing my distorted father on a quest to kill me. But then, suddenly, as if some unknown force within me led me, I raised my hand. I was in some semi-conscious mode. I was not precisely aware of what I am doing, who was controlling my actions over my body and how nor why have I raised my hand. Everything seemed like an out-of-body experience where I watched tendrils of energy slithering out of my hand. The next scene before me was a massive portal-like void, with transparent glimmering and oval edges. In this Narnia kind of experience, a portal opened, and the scenery on the other side was in absolute contrast to my present environment.

Peeking through the portal, I saw a realm that led to what seemed like a forsaken, deserted, Martian-like venue. Given that I was still on the run from the beast that is my father, and with not much choice, I just indifferently jumped in. I was not in the forest of Amaralva ghosts anymore. I was in some desert-like venue and mid of the night. Alone, abandoned and lost in the middle of goddess-forsaken and barren land, endless desert sand shimmered in greyish-blue tones bathed by the moonlight. I wandered as a delirious person who had no goal or idea who is she or where is she going. I was lost, frightened, and tired. The cold night that surrounded me matched the frigid feeling in my heart. I missed my mother, but I felt her powers within me, and I knew that these were tokens of her love and a sign that she would always be there to protect me.

Apart from that, the only warmth I felt that night was that of my tears that did not stop running down my cheeks. That night, I was wowed that my mother's death would not be in vain. I will run as she asked me to, for now.

However, sooner or later, I will ensure that the detesting and despicable beast that my father is pays for every second of our suffering. He will beg for death, and it will never come. I was running out of breath as night lazily turned to dawn, full of haze.

What kind of a fucking desert is this?

It's so cold and dark, like I am on some deserted planet.

The sand was sticking to my sweat and layers of dust and dirt that already made armour on my skin and whatever was left of my clothes. I heard his devious smile in the background as he took his sweet time chasing me. He knew I would get exhausted sooner or later. Several hours later, I am still on the run. It looks like the sky and ground before me had merged in some warped, never-ending, twisted sphere where I am surrounded by sand only…I feel that if the bastard that’s tailing me does not kill me, this fucking sand will. It will swallow me, chew me, and spit out my limp corpse once it devours my life force….I am so tired…tired of life…tired of hatred…tired of running…I want to succumb to my destiny…Hopefully, he will finish me off as quickly as he killed my mother. Mother. I cannot believe she is gone. Fresh, hot tears ran down my cheeks, warming me up on this freezing night full of solitude and sorrow. I knew I should keep on because of her. But I am so tired. There is so much that one could take. I have no more fight in me.

I am hungry, exhausted, defeated and ready to surrender. I didn’t care whether I would die in the desert because of exhaustion, dehydration and starvation or by the hand of a man who gave me life in the first place. I fell backwards to the ground and waited for death to come. With a blissful smile of yielding to fate, I raised the imaginary white flag of defeat. I am ready to see my mother soon. She always makes it easier. And then I saw the bastard approaching me with a psychotic cackle. "Bring it on motherfucker!" I yelled and smirked with mirth. His massive Lycan form was above me, opening his Cerberus-looking-like jaws.