Chapter 66: Dying Heartbeat
Lauren was catching her breath as she continued to run deep down the forest while the wraiths were chasing her.
She tripped, fell on the ground, tore so parts of her dress on the way, and even suffered several injuries from the wraiths’ attacks but she didn’t stop.
Wraiths were traveling through the wind and were incredibly fast so she had to fight them off while running.
Her body was getting weaker by the minute and she knew she couldn’t hold for long. She was wounded and she almost consud all her energy just to create a spellbound object to protect herself.
As she ran further, an old huge house in a distance ca into her view. She didn’t know what could be waiting for her there but she saw nothing else and she didn’t have any idea where to go. Perhaps she could find sothing in the house that would lead her out of the forsaken place she was trapped into.
Panting, she forcefully pushed the double doors of the huge wooden house and closed them before the wraiths could follow her inside.
With the remaining strength she had, she put the house under a barrier that would prevent the wraiths from entering for so ti.
With her body forced to use all its energy and stretched beyond its limits, she let herself fall on the floor.
Laying on her back and staring at the ceiling blankly, it was only then she realized how dry her lips were and how she was almost shivering. She realized it was colder in that place than anywhere she had been before. The cold was bearable right now with her inside the house, but the throbbing wounds on her body felt like a deep burn on her skin. She had been injured before but this ti, it was different. It was more painful. She wondered if it was because wraiths were the most lethal evil spirits.
She closed her eyes for a mont, gathering so strength to stand up and find a way back ho. But she felt like her body was a heavy tal rod she couldn’t move.
"Lauren..."
That voice.
Lauren forced herself to open her heavy eyelids when she heard her mother’s voice. Although many years had passed, she could never forget Lady Mildred’s sweet voice. It was carved in her mind and soul. Her sweet mother who was always kind and could never hurt anyone. She still could clearly rember the last ti she called her na, so she couldn’t be mistaken. It was her voice.
She pierced the sword into the wooden floor and used it as support as she pulled herself up. However, when she looked around, she saw no one else in the house. It was just a hallucination, she guessed.
The wraiths outside continued to attack the barrier and Lauren knew the weak barrier she made would soon break. She balled her fists in frustration. Most of the ti she had a solution to her problems but this ti, she was at a disadvantage. It was a place she had never been before, and she didn’t know what were the odds that she would make it out alive.
On her wobbly knees, she walked around the house to see if there was anything she could use, or if there was a portal or a secret passageway that would bring her out of the mirror. But as she spent more ti inside, she noticed the temperature was dropping drastically until the house was filled with fog due to severe coldness.
Lauren could no longer hear the noise from the wraiths outside so she assud that they stopped trying to break the barrier. But her problem now was the very low temperature inside the house. The cold had always been her nesis.
When she saw how the wooden walls slowly started to turn ice, she panicked. She reached for her pockets to get her gloves but she found out she only had one. She must have lost the other while running outside.
Thinking that there must be sothing wrong with the house, she went to the doors to see if it was the sa outside, but she couldn’t pull the doors open. She had exhausted her power so she couldn’t cast another spell to force the door to open, so she tried using the sword, but it didn’t work.
She slamd herself into the door with the little force she could afford, but it would not open.
Now she was trapped again.
A bitter smile tugged on Lauren’s lips while hugging her knees as she leaned on the door weakly. She wondered what was worse. Being chased by wraiths outside which were unkillable and would exhaust her until she died, or being trapped inside the mysterious house where she would freeze to death. She couldn’t choose. With her state, she could survive neither of the two.
Monts later, she was trembling hard. Despite wearing thick clothes, with her surroundings turning to ice, she felt the coldness seeping through her bones, the frostbite on her bare fingers, and how her whole body was going numb.
She felt like she was going to die.
But the thing was, she wasn’t ready.
She couldn’t accept that she would die in such a miserable way. She couldn’t accept that the person who killed her mother was the sa person who served her death. She promised to one day avenge her mother, to let the royal family see how she would bring them down and serve the best vengeance they deserved, but now she didn’t think she could do that unless so miracle would happen.
But unfortunately, miracles rarely happened in her life. Perhaps she was born with bad luck.
Her eyelids fell as her heart started to beat slower than normal.
She was so sure she would take her last breath in that cold place, but before her heart could take its last beat, a pair of warm arms enveloped her frozen body.
"Breathe, Lauren."
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