99 AC / 54 HA
Hermione
The cobblestones beneath my bare feet were cool, yet the air was heavy with a strange, golden haze. I stood in the middle of a winding street, flanked by tall, pale houses. There was no one around. Not a single soul. The silence was deafening, yet it did not feel menacing.
"Mione."
The voice drifted from a great distance, soft as spun silk.
I turned. At the far end of the street stood the silhouette of a woman. The harder I tried to focus on her, the more the edges of the world began to blur, melting like watercolours left out in the rain. She wore a dress of deep, rich blue that seemed to catch the golden light, but her face remained entirely obscured—a blank, shifting canvas.
"Come, sweetling," the voice called again, carrying a profound, aching tenderness. "We need to go."
An immense, radiating warmth bloomed in my chest. It felt like standing in the first true rays of spring sun after a bitterly long winter. Without realising it, my lips parted, silently mouthing a word I had never truly known.
Mother?
I took a step toward her. The warmth intensified, wrapping around me like a heavy, protective blanket. A profound feeling of absolute fulfilment washed over my soul. Every fear, every uncertainty, every lingering shadow of the mist vanished. I reached out my hand, my fingers trembling as I closed the distance. I was so close. Just a few more paces—
The ground violently lurched beneath my feet.
A low, subterranean roar shattered the golden haze. I stumbled, looking up to see a tidal wave of crushing darkness rising on the horizon, moving with terrifying speed.
"No!" I screamed, lunging forward.
My fingers brushed the velvet of her sleeve. But before I could close my grip, the darkness slammed into us, violently swallowing the blue dress, the warmth, and the golden street in freezing blackness.
"Mother, take me with you! Don't go, please!"
I bolted upright, screaming into the void, hot tears already streaming down my face. My chest heaved violently as I sobbed, my hands clawing desperately at the damp earth beneath my bedroll.
The horrific stench of rotting meat and copper slammed into my senses, jarring me awake.
I was not on a golden street. I was sitting in the freezing mud of the Rhoynar ruins, and the scenery was exploding with violence.
"Stay down, Hermione!"
Father's voice roared over the guttural, ragged snarling echoing through the mist.
I scrambled backward, pressing myself against the ruined timber of the hut. The campsite was utterly swarming. Dozens of them were pouring out of the dense grey fog. Stone Men. Their crusted, diseased skin looked like jagged rock in the flickering firelight, their milky white, pupil-less eyes rolling wildly as thick, yellow foam dripped from their snarling jaws.
Father stood directly between me and the horde.
He wielded a massive, unadorned broadsword, his movements a terrifying blur of lethal efficiency. He was not using magic. He was moving with the brutal physical prowess of a seasoned Legionary.
A Stone Man lunged at him, its rocky hands outstretched. Father pivoted sharply, swinging the broadsword in a devastating arc. The heavy steel sheared through the creature's midsection, cleaving it cleanly in twain. Black, viscous blood sprayed across the damp earth.
Two more rushed him from the flank. Father didn't even blink. He stepped into the assault, bringing the pommel of his sword smashing into the skull of the first, shattering the petrified bone with a sickening crack. Without breaking his momentum, he reversed his grip and drove the blade straight up through the jaw of the second, the point erupting from the top of its crusted skull.
He kicked the twitching corpse off his blade, his emerald eyes constantly darting back to check my position.
"Hold the line!" he grunted, though he was speaking only to himself.
A stray ghoul managed to slip past his wide guard, its milky eyes locking directly onto me. It hissed, scrambling over the mud on all fours like a rabid hound. I reached frantically for my wand, my hand shaking too badly to form a proper incantation.
Before the creature could even leap, a heavy steel boot slammed down onto its spine, pinning it to the earth. Father had crossed the gap in the blink of an eye. With a brutal, downward thrust, he severed the creature's head from its shoulders, stepping back into a defensive guard to meet the next wave.
He was a slaughter given form. He hacked, cleaved, and dismembered the infected horde, methodically building a protective ring of severed limbs and twitching torsos around our campsite. He moved with a chilling rhythm, his face utterly devoid of panic or strain.
Finally, the snarling died away. The last Stone Man fell, its chest caved in by a devastating horizontal sweep.
The heavy, dead silence of the mist returned, broken only by the crackle of our campfire and my own ragged breathing.
Father stood completely still for a moment, chest rising and falling evenly. He raised the broadsword, giving it a sharp, practiced flick of his wrist. A line of thick, black pus and grime splattered onto the mud, leaving the steel perfectly clean. With a subtle pulse of his will, the weapon simply vanished into thin air.
He turned toward me, his velvet coat stained with the ichor of the dead. He walked over, crouching down slowly until he was perfectly level with my trembling form. The cold, brutal warrior vanished, replaced by the gentle, glowing eyes of my father.
"Are you hale?" he asked quietly.