RE-MADE

THE SECOND DAWN

The first sensation was pain. A dull, throbbing ache behind her eyes that pulsed in time with a heartbeat that felt too loud, too present.

Light. It was the second thing. Harsh and golden, cutting through the dusty air of the attic. She groaned, flinching away from it, her hand rising to shield her face. The movement sent a fresh spike of pain through her skull.

She was breathing. The realization was a shock. She remembered… not breathing. She remembered the end.

“What…?” The word was a dry croak, unfamiliar in her own throat.

She forced herself to sit up, as the book on her chest fell to the wooden floor.The thin mattress creaked in protest. She was in the attic. Her prison. The one with the cracked window and the whispering rats.

Her heart began to hammer against her ribs, a frantic drumbeat of confusion. She looked down at her hands. They were clean. Unmarked. No scars, no burns. She brought her fingers to her face, tracing the skin of her cheek, her jaw, her left eye…

Her left eye.

It was there. She could see out of it. She could feel the lid blink. Whole. Unharmed.

“No,” she whispered, the denial a sharp breath. “I died. I felt it.”

She scrambled off the bed, her legs unsteady, and stumbled to the far wall. A old, faded calendar hung from a nail. And beside it, a sliver of mirror, cracked and dusty.

She wiped the glass clean with a frantic hand.

And she stared.

The face that stared back was her own, but… younger. Softer. The face of the girl she was before the world ended. No scars. No acid-burned ruin. Just wide, shocked eyes in a pale face.

Her gaze shot to the calendar. The date screamed at her.

It was 2××7, September 28th. she raised her trembling hand to the calendar,"this...","this is the..."

The week after her mother’s funeral. The beginning of it all.

Her breath left her in a rush. Her knees threatened to buckle. She gripped the edge of a dusty crate, her mind reeling, trying to process the impossible.

Slowly, her trembling stopped. The shock began to crystallize. It hardened in her chest, cold and sharp and purposeful.

Her fingers curled into fists, her short, neat nails digging into her own palms. A sensation so blessedly, mundanely alive.

And then, a smile touched her lips. It was not a happy smile. It was a thing of sharp edges and cold promise, a predator’s smile.

She lifted her chin with a smile on her face and met the eyes of the girl in the mirror. But the eyes that looked back were no longer those of a victim. They were ancient. They were furious. They were reborn.

“A second chance,” she breathed, the words a vow spoken to the silence. “The gods have given me a second chance.”

She leaned closer, her reflection filling the cracked glass,as she moves her hand from her face to her hair as she brushes the few strands that covered her eyes calmly.

“This time,” she whispered, her voice dropping to a steely, terrifying calm. “I won’t be better. I won’t be good.”

She paused, letting the promise hang in the dusty air, bringing her hands down and drops it at her sides. and With a stoic and calm face with eyes like they could burn into one's soul...

“This time, I will be worse. And I will ruin them all.”