The Coffin of Crimson Memory
Darkness.
Heavy, choking, infinite.
Alex's eyes flew open—if they were open at all. He couldn't say. Vision was irrelevant here. There was no glimmer of light, no shadow, no edge. Only black. The crushing emptiness bearing down on all sides of him, consuming not only space but thought as well. Even his respiration—if he was respiring—felt consumed, smothered by a quiet that howled in his ears.
There was a weight on his chest. Not agony, not really. It was heavier than that. As if the world itself had slowed down and now pressed into him, a weight infinite and suffocating.
Am I dead?
He commanded his arms to move. Nothing. His legs, also—nothing. His body wasn't numb, it was just. unattainable. As if his mind was attempting to control a puppet through molasses. He wasn't drifting. He was caught, suspended by something thick and sticky. Not air.
Something wet.
And then, finally, came the smell.
It smacked into him slowly, first. Then suddenly. Thick. Metallic. A jagged bite of iron, but with something sweet, something nearly cloying. It went up his nostrils and down his throat, leaving everything it contacted in a slick of film that made his stomach churn.
His tongue detected it second, before his mind could.
Warm. Sticky. Familiar.
And suddenly it clicked.
His mind spun, instincts shrieking as a flashback ripped through him: the metallic deluge in his mouth when he'd been shot. When his own blood had poured past his lips, burning and terrifying.
Blood.
He was drenched in blood.
Awareness broke through the numbness. Panic erupted in his chest like an explosion. His heart exploded into a savage beat. He struggled, or attempted to. his limbs moved slowly, as if trapped in a dream, each action muffled and softened by the viscous fluid.
His mouth opened instinctively, wanting to scream, to inhale—anything.
But as soon as it did, blood flooded in.
Warm. Heavy. Alive.
He gagged, convulsing lungs shuddering at the invasion. His body contorted in spasm of horror, every nerve screaming in wild revolt. His hands threshed the black, probing, begging for solidness.
Then—
Clack.
His fingers hit stone. Cold. Still.
A ceiling?
It towered inches above his face—too close. Way too close.
Panic caught fire like a spark, then exploded into outright terror. He couldn't breathe. Couldn't move. The air around him was cramped, wet, choking. It wasn't darkness—it was an impenetrable pool of water constricting him from all sides. A cell of heavy, thudding blood.
His heart thumped in his chest, louder than his mind. His breath stopped as terror seeped deep into his marrow. He was trapped. Locked in hell's nightmare, entombed in a scarlet shroud that stuck to him like skin.
No light. No voice. Just the suffocating feeling of sinking in some living thing.
His palms shoved against the rock above him, but it did not move. Pain in his muscles extended to his chest, writhing with something much more terrible than fear.
Terror flooded.
His heart pounded against his ribs, a wild beat that was more like a warning than life. He was not just trapped—he was losing himself. The blackness seeped into his mind, draining out reason, speaking crazy. He couldn't scream. Each breath was a struggle against the overwhelming pressure within him.
"What the devil…?" he croaked. His voice was a desert wind, frayed and wasted, hardly his own. "This isn't happening—what occurred? The canyon. my mom…"
Words ignited something.
Memories.
Blinding, jagged, pitiless.
One crack in his mind—and the deluge came back.
Pain shot behind his eyes, driven through his cranium like a searing blade. Images flashed in mad bursts: the canyon's rocky walls, the fossil trapped in rock, the shock of gunfire.
His mother's scream.
The spatter of blood.
The collapse of her body.
"Mom…" he breathed, the name sticking in his throat. His shaking fingers traced the stone lid once more, as if looking for something—a way out, a why, a miracle.
But only grief registered.
Terrifying. Sinking.
They'd killed her.
And him.
He recalled the heat of her blood on his face. Then—something impossible.
A rift. Blinding light. A vortex of wind and shadow that defied logic and shattered the world. It had swallowed them both.
Swallowed everything.
And now—this.
This coffin of blood.
This silence that felt alive.
"What is this place?" he murmured, voice barely more than breath. "Where is she… my mom?"
No reply.
Just the steady thrum of his heartbeat, loud and lonely in the dark.
Sorrow wrapped around him, more tightly than stone. The fluid that enveloped him became colder, more viscous, as if it ate at his grief. His limbs were alien, detached, as if his body no longer belonged to him.
Then it hit.
Agony, piercing and mind-shattering, ripped through him with no warning. It was not only pain—it was invasion. Something other coursed through his mind, burning through his thoughts like flames through dry leaves.
"Ah—!"
He bellowed, his hands grasping for his skull as if he might trap whatever was raking inside him. Pressure headed toward explosion behind his eyes, as if something older and feral had been stirred—and it was clamoring to be free.
His mind fragmented. It was dark behind his shut eyelids, but amidst the blackness, pictures flashed into being. Not dreams. Not fantasy. Recollections.
A newborn infant.
Small. Fragile. Bound in a silken cloth that clung to his shaking body. His body shook, weak in a manner unnatural, as if he was lacking something essential.
He wasn't alone.
Comfort enveloped him—soft, respectful—as if the person who held him was afraid he would shatter. Arms enveloped his small body like a vow. And the woman holding him… she was unlike anyone of this world.
Tall, elegant—shaped not of flesh, but moonlight and starlight. Hair, pale pink shimmering, fell about her back in waves of silk. Skin so pale it seemed to radiate. Eyes of deep, glowing crimson gazed down at him, full of something more than simple fondness.
Power. Ageless. Divine.
She held him close, rocking gently as golden light poured from the crystals embedded in the walls of her sanctuary. Her expression bled sorrow, but her embrace spoke of undying love. She leaned down, her lips brushing against his forehead, and whispered words only he could hear.
"My little one… My Alex… One day, you'll be stronger than them all… Until then, I'll protect you, my son."
The tone of her voice didn't reach his ears. It vibrated in his bones. Gentle, musical—like a lullaby drenched in poignant devotion—but beneath it there was pain. A sorrow too ancient for speech. Too profound for weeping.
And he could sense it.
The heaviness of her vow. The profundity of her devotion. The solitude hidden behind her smile.
His breathing caught. His heart shook.
"I know her…" he gasped, voice ragged. "She's my mother… but not Mother Anna…"
Astonishment coursed through him like icy water down his spine. This woman—so familiar, yet so strange—was not the mother he remembered from his life as a human being. And yet something within him wept for her, yearned for her embrace, her heat, her perfume.
"Why… why do I feel like… she's my mother, too?"
His lips quivered. His eyes clamped tightly shut as if holding the vision in position, his mind unspooling under the deluge of feeling. And yet, it drew him deeper.
Additional visions exploded.
A red-lit room, shrouded in warmth and darkness. Velvet curtains streamed from the tall walls like liquid blood. The air was filled with the aroma of roses in bloom—black, heavy, and sweet. In the center of the room, the woman again stood. A vision of queenly grief, shrouded in night and beauty, cradling a newborn child against her breast.
Her head rested against the child, small fingers wrapping close to her heart. She smoothed a pink lock from her eyes and stared down at the baby as if nothing else mattered.
His smell permeated the air—not hers, not theirs. His. It stuck to him like a film. And when the child's scarlet eyes opened, shining softly in the dim air, something awakened deep within him.
Recognition.
Those were his eyes.
That was his body.
He wasn't recalling. He wasn't observing. He was reliving. Reconnecting with something deep inside.
This wasn't a hallucination or a dream—it was a return.
A homecoming.
And then, floating up through his soul like blood rising to the surface of water, a name surfaced.
Not heard. Not said.
Felt.
A name that didn't belong to the world he recalled—yet rang through his bones like a long-buried truth waiting to be claimed.
Rose Bloodheart.
His mother.
Not Anna River.
Someone entirely different.
And yet… the warmth in her eyes, the protection in her arms, the rock-solid gentleness that enfolded his newborn self—it was the same. The same silent worship he'd once felt in Anna's smile. The same soft power in her fingers.
This was not a stranger.
She was his mother, too.
Somehow.
Impossibly.
Both were.
And the visions did not cease.
They flooded through him like a burst dam, filling every nook of his soul.
He envisioned himself as an infant—though something was… wrong. Not really him. And yet unmistakably so. A reflection thrown in another world. Pink hair gentle against his brow. Crimson eyes half-closed with weariness. Swaddled in embroidered cloth, bunched on a velvet cradle beneath a ceiling of glinting crystal and shadow.
There was no sunlight filtering into this room.
No children's laughter far away.
No other children.
Only her.
And someone else.
A figure haunted the periphery of all his memories, shrouded in silk and quiet. A woman whose hair was as black as night and whose eyes were as still water—cold and quiet and attentive. She never spoke. She only stood in corners and looked with a quiet that was too perfect to be human.
But Rose—she was always there.
Always at his side.
He recalled how she held her hand out to feed him, not trusting servants, not even the one who stood in darkness, always silent. Each bite careful. Her fingers would graze his cheek after the food was gone, as if attempting to remind herself that he existed.
And the songs she sang—lullabies stitched in an ancient language, gentle and ethereal. Each note glowed like candlelight through brocade drapes, soft enough to calm the blackest night.
He recalled sweaty nights, when his thin body trembled with heat and panting cries. How her hands never wavered, even as his flesh seared under her fingertips. She didn't shudder. She didn't shy.
She endured.
Her presence was a balm. A shield. A promise.
She did not treat him like a son.
She treated him like something holy.
A miracle.
A treasure cupped in shaking hands, too precious to be spoken, too delicate to let go.
The years unspooled like silk in a tempest.
From wailing infant to wobbling toddler. From boyhood to silent puberty.
Ten.
Then fifteen.
Every birthday branded itself on him with eerie distinctness. Candles burning in an empty room. A tiny, alone cake. A birthday not witnessed by dozens—but merely three.
Him.
Rose.
And the black-eyed maid who never grew old, never wavered, never smiled.
There were no sweeping balls. No presents wrapped in silk. Only gentle words, grasped glances, and the comfort of her hand in his.
He recalled her smile on his fifteenth birthday. The final one.
So full of grief.
So full of pride.
So irrevocable.
Then— Nothing.
The heat disintegrated.
The cradle of remembrance shattered.
The images snapped shut like a book slammed in the darkness.
Alex gasped and attempted to get up, but was caught—pinned in an emptiness in which nothing stirred, nothing breathed. His hands tore at his skull, trying to push the pressure out, as if he could drive the truth back into concealment.
A searing energy billowed behind his eyes, grinding against the corners of his mind like a serrated knife.
It was painful.
Painful beyond anything ever experienced.
And just as it engulfed him, a lone thought cut through the muddle—
"And then, everything went dark."
He didn't know if it was a dream…
A recollection…
Or the start of something else.