Into the Maw
1170 Words
Mia's POV
The iron gates clanged shut behind me, their echo rolling through the hollow air like a death sentence. My stomach lurched as if the sound had sealed me into a coffin rather than a courtyard.
The guards didn’t speak, only shadows with steel eyes and heavier hands, ushering me forward with spears angled at my back.
The ground beneath my boots shifted from dirt to stone, darker with every step.
I kept my chin high, though my body trembled beneath the weight of their stares. The air was thick here, wrong somehow, laced with the scent of ash and damp earth.
But it wasn’t the gates or the guards that rooted fear in my chest,it was the woman waiting beyond.
She stood in the shadows of a crumbling archway, draped in grey, her face half-hidden.
Yet the moment my eyes met hers, my pulse faltered.
I knew her,not from this place, not from any moment I could name in this life,but from somewhere older, buried deep in the marrow of me.
Then the visions came.
Blood slick walls of a birthing chamber.
A woman’s scream, raw and broken.
So many hands,passing a newborn, wrapping her too tightly, muffling her cry.
A different voice whispered “Take her from here before she knows.”
My breath hitched and my knees threatened to buckle.
Because the woman before me was the same one who bent over me in that vision, her shadow looming as my newborn self wailed against the night.
“Mother…” The word slipped from me before I could stop it, fragile and trembling.
Her eyes widened with recognition flashing, then sorrow, then something I couldn’t name before she masked it beneath stone.
“Keep moving,” a guard barked, shoving me forward.
My shoulder collided with cold stone, dragging me out of the vision’s grip, but my pulse kept racing.
It wasn’t just a dream.
It was a memory.
I swallowed, forcing my legs to move, forcing my face into stillness though my mind screamed.
If she was my mother, then why was she here?
Why hadn’t she come for me?
Why did her presence drip with the same darkness that lingered in this place?
The woman stepped back into the archway as I was forced to follow, her voice low, shaking as though unused for years.
“You shouldn’t have come.”
I froze.
Every nerve lit like fire,the guards stiffened, glancing at her as though she had broken some unspoken rule.
But she didn’t flinch.
Her gaze stayed locked on mine, and for the briefest moment, the steel melted, and I saw her lips quiver like she wanted to call me something,my name,but bit it back.
“Move.” The guard’s shove snapped the moment.
I wanted to scream, to demand answers, to tear the truth out of her throat.
But the timing was wrong, the danger was too close.
Instead, I clutched the fragments of that flashback tight against my heart, promising myself I would pry them open later.
We went deeper.
The walls here weren’t just stone, they were alive with veins of dark light, pulsing faintly as if this fortress itself had a heartbeat.
The air grew colder, biting at my skin, thickening with the weight of something foul, something ancient.
Every step I took felt like stepping into the belly of a beast.
“You feel it, don’t you?”
The woman’s voice was barely a whisper now, yet it curled around my ear as if meant only for me.
“What have they made of this place? What have they made of me?”
I dared a glance back, but the guards’ spears pressed closer, reminding me silence was safer.
Still, the words burrowed under my skin.
They had made her.
Which meant,she wasn’t here by choice,and if Carmella worked for Malethor, then it was Carmella’s hand that had put her here.
My gut twisted.
We passed torch after torch, the light bending strangely, shadows clinging to the walls too long, stretching like claws.
My heart hammered harder with every turn, every descent.
Finally, the corridor widened into a hall, its ceiling lost to black.
Chains hung from the rafters, some rattling with unseen weight.
A stench from iron, rot, and despair rose here.
The guards pushed me forward to the center, where a circle was etched into the stone floor.
Runes bled faint light, pulsing like the veins in the walls.
My skin prickled.
This was no ordinary place.
“This is where he decides,” one guard muttered under his breath, as though the words themselves were forbidden.
“Decide what?” I signaled, my voice held down, but the fear was twisting into defiance now.
The guard sneered but didn’t answer.
The woman,my mother,stayed near the edge of the circle.
Her hands trembled at her sides, hidden beneath the folds of her sleeves.
When her eyes met mine again, there was no mask, time,only raw anguish.
“I tried to keep you away,” she whispered.
My throat burned.
“Why? Why didn’t you..”
The ground shook.
A low rumble rose from the depths of the hall, vibrating through my bones.
The runes flared brighter, casting the woman’s face in stark relief,and for the first time, I saw not just sorrow there, but terror.
She took a step back, her lips parting as though to warn me.
But before the words could escape, a voice boomed from the shadows, deep and jagged as stone grinding against stone.
“Bring her forward.”
The guards seized my arms, dragging me into the circle. My body fought, twisting, kicking, but the runes burned hotter beneath my feet, their glow searing my skin even through my boots.
The woman lunged, only to be yanked back by invisible chains that snapped tight around her wrists. Her cry ripped through the hall, it was raw, desperate, and unmistakably maternal.
“Mia!”
The sound of my name in her voice shattered me.
I thrashed harder, but the guards held fast.
Then, from the darkness ahead, a figure moved.
It was tall, cloaked, and faceless in the shadows, but every step he took made the runes pulse in time with his stride.
Malethor.
I felt his presence before I saw him fully, a crushing weight pressing on my chest, stealing the air from my lungs.
The woman sobbed, her knees buckling as the chains dragged her down. “Don’t take her,please, not her!”
But he didn’t answer her. His gaze, though hidden,locked on me.
“You carry more than you know,” his voice rumbled, curling like smoke. “And I will have it.”
The runes flared so bright I had to squeeze my eyes shut.
My body burned, my head screamed with a hundred voices at once, memories crashing, birth, blood, a hand switching me with another child,it was Carmella’s hand.
Then my eyes caught up with something I was trying to figure out before darkness slammed down.
- Writer
