Katherine's pov
Luna had been acting strange all evening. First she chased something I couldn't see, then hissed at a corner like it had insulted her.
I tried to ignore it, focused on the soup simmering gently on the stove, stirring more than necessary just to keep my hands busy.
Outside, the light faded fast. Just minutes ago, it had been golden. Now everything was bathed in that blue-grey hush, the kind of twilight that makes shadows stretch too long, like they're reaching for something.
I remembered a story my mother used to tell me: "When the sun dips low, when it's not day anymore, but not quite night,the veil between our world and the other gets thin."
I used to believe that.
Then I grew up. And the world didn't leave much room for stories like that. Stories to frighten children and make them go to bed early, or to keep them home and not play out in the dark.
But tonight? Tonight it didn't feel like a story. It felt like a warning.
Luna darted across the kitchen again, pawing at empty air.
"Stop it," I muttered, but my voice came out too soft. Too unsure.
My eyes kept flicking to the window. Not because something was out there, no, just a feeling. That awful, sinking sense of being watched. It hadn't left me since earlier.
Since I saw Aunt Mary.
"There's a thread tangled round your heart. One death didn't cut clean."
I'd told her she was being dramatic. Said I wasn't followed by anything. But even as I brushed her off, her words stayed.
And when I turned to say goodbye she was gone. Just gone. No footsteps. No door creaking open. Nothing.
I didn't tell anyone. What would I even say? How could I? Jade would've laughed, said it was all in my head. And maybe he'd be right.
Now I sat by the window, the soup untouched in front of me, absentmindedly gazing and tracing the scar on my wrist. I always say it was from an accident, that when i was a child i fell off a horse. Simple. Clean.
But I don't really remember. How or when i got it, it just been here since forever.
Then i looked up to my reflection it stared back from the window, tired, hollowed out.
"You need sleep," I whispered to myself.
Maybe some mint tea. Something to calm me down. And some rosemary from the garden to settle under my pillow. No more dreams tonight.
But then, just for a second, I saw it. A shape behind me. Dark, blurred, away.
I turned fast.
Nothing.
Luna hadn't moved. Still staring at that same damn corner. Purring, her tail twitching.
I laughed, quiet and shaky. "It's just a corner, Luna."
But I didn't believe it.
I tried to remember that dream from last night. The one that slipped away the second I opened my eyes, leaving only scraps behind: Trees. Tall, swaying like they were breathing.
A forest.
Was it the haunted one everyone whispers about?
And ruins, yes. Crumbled stone swallowed by moss and roots.
I've never been there. Not even close. But in the dream, I moved through it like I knew the place. Every tree, every step, every breath of wind.
It was like the wind was speaking.
I was running. But from what? Or to what?
Whatever it was, it felt real. Deeper than real.
Now the house was silent. And the dream didn't feel over. It felt like I was still in it.
Then I heard it again.
A voice. The sentence, the thing i was trying to remember:
"Lumine, Lumine... remember me."
I froze.
My hands pressed into the table as I stood, heart pounding.
It echoed in my head, too loud to be memory, too quiet to be anything else.
Without thinking, I spoke the words aloud:
"Lumine, Lumine... remember me!"
Everything went still. A stroke of dizziness hit me, even the air went still. I held myself together trying not to collapse.
Far off, I sensed a faint shift. Like someone moving. Or stopping. Something made my hair stand on end.
No. Just the wind. It's just wind.
I shook my head. "Get it together, Katherine," I muttered, before i finally picked the dishes, the untouched food, and started scrubbing everything just for the sake of doing something.
As the warm water ran over my fingers, I found myself humming an old song under my breath
"High in the halls of the kings who are gone, Jenny would dance with her ghosts…"
It was something everyone knew, sung at festivals or while washing clothes by the river. The melody just slipped out of me.
"The ones she had lost and the ones she had found…"
The rhythm of it helped steady me, helped quiet the strange tension coiled in my chest.
"And the ones who had loved her the most…"
By the time I dried my hands, I was exhausted. Yet kept on humming.
"They spun her around on the damp old stones
Spun away all her sorrow and pain..."
I slipped into the garden with lantern in hands,
"And she never wanted to leave..."
grabbed some fresh rosemary, locked the doors, and headed straight to my room.
"Never wanted to leave..."
The cool wood under my feet.
"Never wanted to leave..."
"Never wanted to leave..."
I changed into a soft nightgown dusty rose, comforting. I pulled the blanket over me and stared at the ceiling. The hallway candles light stretched a line across the floor brightening the room.
Sleep wouldn't come yet.
My fingers tightened around the blanket.
Who's Lumine?
The name felt like a ghost.
No one in this village is named that. I would know. It's too strange. Too haunting.
Where did it come from?
And why does it feel like it's calling me?
The more I repeated it in my head, the more it didn't sound like a name I'd just heard in a dream.
I whispered it again. Lumine.
It echoed inside me like a spell I hadn't meant to say.
Was it someone I used to know?
The thought chilled me. I pulled the blanket closer, heart thudding against my ribs.
This is ridiculous. I'm being ridiculous. Thinking about some random name, ive probably heard somewhere and buried it deep in my mind.
And yet… I couldn't shake the feeling that something had shifted tonight.
Somewhere between me asking questions and the silence the room offered, sleep took me like a tide.