Shanane woke with a jolt, her lungs gasping as if she had been drowning. The scent of smoke and old parchment still clung to her skin, the heat of the hidden room lingering beneath her flesh like an invisible brand. Her chest rose and fell rapidly as she lay sprawled on the wooden floor of the living room, her fingers curled against the grain of the boards.
It took her a moment to realize where she was, not in the secret room, not in that stifling, shifting place where shadows whispered and books bled with ancient truths. She was back in the cottage. Her cottage. The one she thought she knew.
But the silence wasn't normal. It wasn't comforting. It was watchful. She slowly lifted her head. And saw it.
The secret door was still open, wide, waiting.
Its dark mouth gaped from the shadowed corner of the room where light had never touched, exactly where she had found it. The same shadows curled around its frame like fingers reluctant to let her go.
Her heart gave a painful, heavy thud in her chest. It had been real. All of it: the heat, the symbols, the whispers, the name: "Atheramond."
She didn't need to question whether it had been another nightmare, there was no dream that left a door open behind it.
Her body trembled as she pushed herself into a sitting position, her muscles aching, her throat dry. She stared at the passage, bile rising slowly into her throat, a mix of fear, disbelief, and something deeper, something colder.
Her grandmother…
The one who had raised her, held her when she cried, hummed lullabies to her in the quiet of long nights. The woman who had taught her to respect the earth, to listen to the wind, to heal, not harm; that woman had been a witch. A real witch.
Not the kind whispered about by villagers out of ignorance or fear. But the kind that bound herself to powers far beyond the veil. The kind that made deals with entities whose names should never be spoken. The kind who carved runes in blood. Who chanted beneath the waning moon. Who sacrificed.
She felt hollow, cold. The only family she had ever known, the one person in the world who had made her feel safe, had loved her, fiercely and fully was the same person who had kept a dark secret buried beneath their home.
And she hadn't just practiced these rituals. She had documented them. Studied them. Honed them. Lived them.
Shanane couldn't reconcile the two truths warring in her mind: the woman who had tucked her in at night, who brewed tea to soothe her fevers, who taught her to love plants and read the win and the other hand, the woman who had inked blood-soaked runes, who had written desperate instructions to bind and control things that should not be named.
Her hands curled into fists on her lap, her nails biting into her palms. She didn't want to believe it. She didn't want to imagine her grandmother with blood on her hands, whispering in the night to something beyond human comprehension. She wanted to see her not as the woman who raised her, not as the woman who summoned the thing she had just felt wake up.
And yet, she couldn't unsee the pages, the runes, the warnings. The desperate, crumbling script that detailed the pact with a being called Atheramond. The pleas. The binding. The sacrifices.
Her grandmother wasn't just a witch. She was a servant of something terrible. And Shanane was now part of it. Whether she wanted to be or not.
She sat on the floor, knees drawn to her chest, the cold seeping into her bones despite the lingering heat that clung to her skin. Her arms were wrapped tightly around herself, but it did nothing to stop the tremors that wracked her body. The open passage yawned in the corner like a wound carved into the heart of her home, a door to something ancient, something she could no longer pretend wasn't real.
She stared at it, her lips parted as if to speak, though no words came. Her throat tightened, her eyes stinging.
What else had her grandmother hidden?
What else had she been?
And then the thought surfaced, raw and cruel. Had her grandmother died because of them? Was it Atheramond who killed her?
Or something she had summoned? A creature she had failed to control?
Her breath caught painfully. It all made sense now, didn't it? She had been found in a cavern. Alone. Her body deformed, unnaturally twisted. No murderer. No weapon. Just...death.
Eoghan had spoken of satanic symbols. Of dark markings on the walls, around the circle. Symbols like the ones Shanane had seen in that book. Like the ones carved in the pages, bleeding through time.
No one had taken her grandmother. She had brought death upon herself. By choice. By ritual. By invoking something that should have stayed buried.
The young woman felt her chest collapse under the weight of it. Her hands pressed to her ribs, trying to keep herself from falling apart. The air in the room grew thicker, heavier with every breath. Her vision blurred, the walls pressing inward, the silence louder than any scream.
She couldn't stay here, she told herself.
Her feet moved before her thoughts could catch up. She staggered to the door, barely remembering to grab her coat as she shoved the front door open, stumbling out into the cold. The wind struck her like a slap sharp, biting, real and yet, it did nothing to steady her.
The house loomed behind her, that cursed place built with secrets and shadows, and still it seemed to breathe behind her, pulsing with what she had awoken.
She walked. Fast at first, then slower, aimless. The trees swayed in the distance. The village lay quiet, its roofs low and peaceful against the gray sky. Somewhere, a dog barked faintly, a windmill creaked. It was normal sounds, safe sounds. But they felt like lies now. The world hadn't changed but she had.
Her steps carried her away from the cottage, across the edge of the village and into the open, brittle grass. She didn't know where she was going, only that she needed space, air, something that didn't carry her grandmother's scent or her presence.
And yet, the weight followed her. It was in her chest. In her blood. The truth wouldn't let go.
Her grandmother had lived a life that Shanane never knew. A life of darkness masked in warmth. A life of quiet pacts and quiet rituals, done while the village slept, while Shanane dreamed in her bed just above it all. Her grandmother had hidden it so well.
And now that she was gone, that truth had passed on. To Shanane. Not through stories or letters. But through shadows and whispers. Through nightmares and ink.
She had inherited it. Not by blood alone.
But by something deeper. Something binding.
Tears slipped from her cheeks without permission. She stopped walking, her knees weak, her breath coming shallow as she stood alone in the open field. Above her, the sky stretched wide and pale. But it couldn't reach her.
Nothing could.
She was no longer just the girl who lost her grandmother.
She was the girl who had opened the door.
Who had spoken the name. She had stepped into something that had no rules. No form. No mercy. And now, she couldn't turn back.
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∆☆ ATHERAMOND ☆∆
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The young woman stood still in the middle of the field, her hair clinging damp to her face. She didn't wipe the tears away. They didn't matter anymore. Nothing did. Not the cold biting at her fingers, not the clouds hanging low like a sky ready to collapse, not the world that went on quietly around her while hers fractured.
The weight of everything she'd seen, everything she'd read sat heavy on her shoulders. She hadn't come here looking for magic or curses or monsters in the dark. She had come to mourn. To bury the only family she had left. And now she didn't even know who she had buried.
The more she tried to understand, the less she could hold on to. Her grandmother's gentle voice, her warm hands, the way she would hum softly while making tea or brushing Shanane's hair. They all felt like ghosts now, memories wearing the skin of a lie.
Had any of it been real? Or had it all been a mask for something older, something bound to rituals and pacts?
"Did she ever really love me…?"
The question left her lips like a breath, barely audible. But once spoken, it lodged itself in her chest. It wasn't just grief anymore, it was doubt. Cold and splintered, spreading through her ribs like cracks in glass.
Had her grandmother loved her… or had she merely cared for her out of duty? Out of necessity? Was Shanane simply a piece in a larger puzzle, something to be protected only because she served a purpose?
Could someone who summoned the kind of power she had, who spilled ink and blood for dark gods, still know how to love?
The wind whipped around her, dragging strands of hair across her face. She didn't move. The cold stung, but it was nothing compared to the ache burrowed deep inside her chest.
And then another question surfaced, slow, terrible, inevitable.
"What did she do to them?"
The villagers. The people who looked at her like a stain, who whispered and turned their backs. They hated her grandmother. Feared her. Called her a witch. For so long Shanane had thought it was ignorance. Prejudice. Cruel superstition.
But now… now she wasn't sure.
What if their fear had been earned? What if her grandmother had hurt them, not with blades or poison, but with curses, with influence, with power that bent the air and twisted fate?
How many of their sick had she healed? And how many had she… chosen not to? What did the word "protection" in her notes truly mean? Who had paid the price?
Her stomach turned, nausea rising with the thought. If even part of the rituals in those journals were real, if they truly worked, then there had to be a cost. Magic didn't come freely. There was always something it demanded in return.
And if her grandmother had been practicing it for years, hidden beneath that quiet cottage… then there had to be a trail of pain somewhere. Quiet. Unseen. Forgotten. Or maybe just buried.
Just like her.
Shanane lowered her head, the tears falling freely, not from grief, but from the kind of sorrow that comes when everything you believed is stripped away, and what's left is nothing but questions and the echo of something dark waiting in the silence.
The wind had quieted. Even the rustling of the grass around her had gone still, as if the world itself was holding its breath.
She stood frozen, her arms wrapped tightly around her trembling frame, her mind lost in the hollow ache of too many truths.
But then, something changed.
The air behind her grew denser. Heavier.
She didn't hear footsteps. She didn't see a shadow stretch across the ground.
But she knew.
It wasn't even a question or a fleeting fear. It was certainty. Something was there, watching her.
She could feel the weight of it like a second skin, thick, pressing down on her shoulders, coiling around her spine. A pressure that didn't touch her body, but invaded it all the same. It settled just behind her, unmoving, but undeniably present.
Her breathing slowed, her pulse thudding deep and low in her chest. Her skin prickled with cold that had nothing to do with the wind.
She didn't dare turn around. She didn't have to. Whatever it was, it didn't want to be seen. Not yet. But it didn't try to hide its presence either. No more pretending. No more illusions.
It was there. And it wanted her to know. It didn't whisper. Didn't speak. It just… was.
A silent observer. A looming force that had no face, no form, but still watched her with a gaze that pierced deeper than eyes ever could.
They both understood now. It didn't need to reveal itself. And she didn't need to see it.
Because it knew that she knew. And still, it stayed. Waiting.