Marked by my past life

Chapter two

Astrid woke to silence, but it wasn’t the natural kind, it was the kind that settles over a place at rest. This felt deliberate. Built. Like something had removed every unnecessary sound and left only what mattered. Her breath came slow and uneven, as though her body had forgotten how to panic properly.

For a moment, she didn’t move, didn’t open her eyes because she already knew, deep down her heart, she knew she wasn’t where she had been. The air felt different. Colder. Heavier. It carried the scent of stone and metal, and something faint beneath it, like dried roses left too long in the dark.

Slowly, she opened her eyes and tried to observe her surroundings, the ceiling stretched far above her, too high, too distant to belong to any ordinary room. Shadows gathered along its edges, unmoving. She pushed herself up slowly, but pain answered immediately—sharp along her wrists, her shoulders, the back of her neck.

She froze.

Marks, Impressions pressed into her skin, as though something had held her too tightly or refused to let go.

Her breath hitched, and the memory came back all at once. The house. The darkness. Her children. His voice.

And her chest tightened sharply.

“Astrid.”

She spun in the direction of the voice. That’s when she saw him.

Ryker, standing at the far end of the chamber, was watching. The distance didn’t seem to matter to him. The space between them felt… irrelevant.

“You’re awake,” he said.

Astrid scrambled backward, her palms sliding against cold stone.

“Don’t come near me.” She screamed.

“I already have,” he said, standing right in front of her. Astrid’s stomach dropped. That couldn’t be possible. One minute he was standing at the far end of the room and the next, he was in front of her. She didn’t know what to make of it, but she knew she wasn’t dealing with a human anymore.

She forced herself upright, but her legs gave out beneath her, sending her back to her knees.

“Did you kill them?” she demanded, her voice breaking despite her effort to steady it. “Did you…”

“They were not the reason I came,” he replied nonchalantly.

“Then why?” she snapped. “Why me? What do you want from me?”

But before he could speak, the air changed, not around her, through her.

Astrid staggered as something forced its way into her mind.

A hand in hers, bare feet against cold stone, a voice—soft, laughing—speaking in a language she didn’t know, and yet understood.

And Ryker, closer in a different way, not as a stranger, nor an enemy, but as something else.

Astrid gasped and dropped to her knees, her hands gripping her head.

“Stop…” she whispered. “Stop doing that.”

Ryker stepped closer this time, slower. Measured.

“You felt it again.”

Astrid shook her head violently. “It’s not real.”

“It was,” he said.

There was a pause, then quietly he added.

“It still is.”

Something inside her shifted, fully breaking, but misaligning, like a lock turning the wrong way.

The memory didn’t leave this time. It lingered, warmth settling where fear should have been and that terrified her more than anything in this place.

“You’re lying,” she whispered.

Ryker tilted his head slightly.

“I wish I were.”

Silence stretched.

Astrid forced herself to look around. The space didn’t feel like a prison, it felt too deliberate, too familiar, almost like she was standing in a place she had known once and failed to remember.

“I want to leave,” she said.

Ryker didn’t answer immediately.

He watched her instead, his expression unreadable, like he was observing something fragile as it came apart.

“You will try,” he said at last.

A pause.

“And you will fail.”

The words should have angered her. Instead, something colder slipped through her.

A memory which wasn’t fully formed, but of her saying those exact words to him.

Astrid stepped back.

“No,” she whispered. “No… that’s not…”

The room seemed to tighten around her.

Ryker turned away.

“You are not ready yet,” he said as he moved toward the far end of the chamber.

“But you will remember enough soon…” he added, without looking back,

“…to hate me properly.”

And then he was gone.

Astrid stood there, breathing unevenly, the silence pressing in again. Alone? Not entirely because this time, the memory returned, stronger this time. Closer. And when it spoke, it said her name back.