An Angel's awakening

Chapter Two

I woke to light.

Soft, golden, bleeding through the curtains warming my face ever so gently. For a moment, I thought I’d dreamt it all — the eyes, the forest, the pulse of something not quite human.

But then I breathed in.

The scent hit me — warm, wild, unmistakable.

Earth and stained wood. And something else… something electric, threaded with heat and quiet power. It wasn’t mine.

My heart tripped over itself. I was in my bed, the sheets fresh, my clothes changed. Someone had been here.

The front door was locked from the inside. The floorboards didn’t creak the way they do when I move. There was no sign of entry — until I looked into my bathroom. My curtain was slightly torn right by the top of the window. That scent, lingered on my skin and tangled in my hair like a memory that didn’t belong to me.

I sat up slowly, fingers curling into the blanket. The world felt shifted again, slightly off-center, like the air before a storm.

Outside, the forest was quiet.

Too quiet. And I felt as if I was being watched.

And deep inside me, something shifted.

For a while, I just sat there, listening to my heartbeat. Every sound felt sharper now — the drip of the sink, the hum of the wind, the faint thrum beneath my skin. I wasn’t imagining it anymore.

I knew what I was. A curse. A mistake. The devil.

The word itself felt heavy, ancient, as if my blood recognized it before my mind did. The dreams weren’t dreams. The eyes in the forest weren’t figments of guilt.

They were a mirror. A mirror of truth I didn’t want to see. If I can just ignore it, maybe it will stop and I can be normal.

God, stop feeling sorry for yourself Aria. You’re just crazy. You will never be normal.

Still, the silence didn’t stay empty for long.

It started as a flicker beneath my thoughts. A whisper caught between breaths. I told myself it was exhaustion — the echo of fear, the mind replaying what it can’t accept. But then it spoke again, soft, feminine, familiar.

“You’re not alone.”

My breath stilled. The voice wasn’t outside. It came from somewhere deeper — somewhere within.

“You’ve always known, haven’t you?” it murmured, as gentle as breath against the back of my mind. "You just forgot.”

“Stop,” I whispered. Pressing my hands as tight as I could against my ears.

But it didn’t.

“You were made for more than this… hiding, pretending, fearing yourself.”

A chill ran through me. The warmth from the night before flared in my chest, spreading through my limbs. My reflection in the mirror blurred — for an instant, I thought I saw gold in my eyes. Then it vanished.

The voice faded, leaving only its echo: calm, certain, patient.

“You’re not the only one.”

I told myself it wasn’t real.

The voice. The eyes. The pull in my blood that begged me to run wild under the moon.

None of it.

I wasn’t part of some secret cult or ancient curse. I was just broken — a mistake of nature. A curse with a heartbeat.

That’s why I built my life here.

Far enough from the nearest town that even the mail refused to come this deep. Just a cabin, a greenhouse, a few animals, and miles of forest between me and anyone I could hurt. The fear of hurting an innocent person outweighed anything else. I don’t want to understand whats wrong with me. I just need to keep to my solitude.

I kept to routines. Routines meant safety.

Morning: feed the goats. Collect eggs. Check the fence line. Milk the cows.

Afternoon: tend the garden, fix whatever wild animals had broken overnight. Plow the fields.

Evening: lock up, double-check the latches, feed Mabel, listen to the quiet until it lulled me back into the illusion of peace.

But the forest was changing.

It started with the prints — deep, deliberate, circling the barn. Too large for the foxes or coyotes that occasionally came sniffing. The first time, I convinced myself it was a stray dog. The second time, I knew better.

There were always four sets. Always different distances apart — as if they surrounded the place, watching. Some prints were deeper, as if they stayed longer.

My animals didn’t panic the way they should have.

The goats stayed calm. The hens didn’t scatter. Even the old shepherd dog, Mabel, didn’t bark — just lifted her head some nights, ears pricked toward the trees, tail twitching, as though she recognized something I didn’t.

And then there was the scent.

It came and went like breath — faint, wild, and familiar. Smoke and stained wood. The same scent that lingered on me after the night I fainted on the porch.

Every time it came back, the air felt heavier. My pulse would change rhythm. My hands would tremble, not from fear, but from something else I refused to name.

The voice, too, had grown quieter but clearer — threading through my thoughts like a melody. Attaching itself to my soul.

“You’re not alone, Aria.”

I ignored it. I always did.

“You’re wrong,” I muttered one morning while splitting wood, sweat sticking to my skin despite the cold. “I’m cursed, not chosen. There’s a difference.”

The wind stirred, carrying the faint echo of a laugh that wasn’t quite mine.

“You keep saying that.”

I slammed the axe into the log harder than I meant to, the wood splintering beneath the blade.

“Because it’s true,” I whispered. “Because if it isn’t, then everything I’ve done… everything I lost…”

The words dissolved before I could finish them.

The forest didn’t answer. It never did. I just shook my head and giggled to myself. “You’re just fu**ing crazy Aria. Hearing things that aren’t there.”

But later, as dusk settled and the shadows stretched long across the pasture, I found them again — the prints. Fresh this time. Closer. A perfect ring around the goat pen.

Mabel sniffed the air and whined, tail low but not fearful. I crouched beside her, tracing one of the paw prints with my fingertips. It was larger than my hand. Deep. Solid. Almost looked like Mabel’s paws, but bigger.

And that scent again — Smoke. It’s been here. Watching. But not to hunt. To frighten me.

I stood slowly, staring into the dark treeline where the mist began to gather again. For a long, still moment, I thought I saw a flicker — a ripple of movement too tall to be a coyote, too fluid to be a bear. My pulse tripped, a strange mix of warning and yearning.

The voice stirred again, low and certain. “He’s waiting for you.”

I shook my head hard, backing away, forcing my eyes from the trees. “No,” I whispered. “There’s nothing there. I’m just crazy. It’s all in my head.”

But when I turned to leave, the wind shifted — and that same wild scent wrapped around me like a touch, warm and familiar. It called to something deeper within my mind.

And for one breathless instant, I could have sworn I heard it — a heartbeat that wasn’t mine, steady and distant, echoing from the forest. Taunting me. After one more scan of the treeline, nothing seemed out of the ordinary. So I made my way back inside my little cabin to start dinner for Mabel and I. She quietly trots next to me with her tongue hanging out and tail wagging. Going up the steps of my cabin, I noticed a set of prints leading towards the gravel road. Human. Weird.