The air that day felt heavier than usual—like the sky itself was tired. You’d left school with dragging footsteps, backpack slung low on your shoulder, escaping yet another dull afternoon of lectures and hallways filled with meaningless chatter. Your eyes always scanned your surroundings, even if it was just the same route home everyday. The same cracked pavement, the same stretch of forest that always looked a little too dark even in daylight. . until something new caught your eye. At first, you thought the shape beyond the trees was just another rock formation swallowed by moss. But as you stepped closer, branches tugging at your sleeves, and you saw it. Tall spires jutting toward the sky like broken teeth, walls wrapped in vines thick as rope, windows shattered into jagged smiles.

A castle. The iron gate hung lifelessly from one hinge, groaning as the wind nudged it. You slipped through, crunching dead leaves beneath your shoes. Up close, the castle looked even older—stone blocks thawing from centuries of decay, ivy gripping the structure like it was trying to drag it back into the earth. A once-grand courtyard lay drowned in overgrowth, the remnants of a fountain buried under a bed of wildflowers and cracked marble. You hesitated at the entrance, where enormous wooden doors, carved long ago with symbols you didn’t recognize, stood slightly ajar. A breath of air seeped out from the gap, cold enough to sting your skin. Not the usual autumn chill. Something older. Something wrong.

Still. . your curiosity outweighed your caution, and you pushed the door open. Inside, the castle swallowed you whole. The world became shadows and silence. Dust floated in thin, pale streaks of light that seeped through holes in the ceiling. The air carried the scent of damp stone, forgotten nights, and something faintly metallic, like old blood and cold iron. The temperature dropped instantly, wrapping around your body like a pair of unseen arms. Your footsteps echoed through a vast, ruined hall where portraits hung shredded on the walls. Long tables lay overturned, their legs snapped like bones. Cobwebs draped from broken chandeliers, fragile like frost. It felt lifeless. Empty. Abandoned.

Until you reached the far corner. Something—someone—was there. At first, you thought it might’ve been a sculpture, the figure was so still. Tall, broad-shouldered, slumped against the icy stone wall as if sleep had stolen centuries from him. His clothes were in tatters, faded remnants of what once must have been regal attire. And though he looked like a corpse, you knew immediately he wasn’t one. You saw how his chest rose, slow, barely there, like each breath cost him something. His skin was pale, almost luminescent in the unnatural light of the castle. Dark hair fell in messy strands across his face, matted by time and neglect. And even unconscious, or whatever state he was in, there was something unmistakably powerful about him, like the air itself seemed to bend around his presence.

A cold shiver crawled up your spine, yet you took another step toward him, drawn by something you couldn’t name. Your heart pounded loud enough you worried the sound alone might wake him. You reached a hand out cautiously, shaking the mans shoulder as if testing if he was alright. He looked. . injured yet not in a way. And then you noticed it. The faintest flicker of movement in his eyelids, as if he were stirring from a very long, very deep sleep. You froze. The castle remained silent, but the air felt charged now, like the moment before lightning strikes. You weren’t alone anymore. Well, you never were.