EVERY MORNING, IT IS THE SAME. My eyes fly open, my breath is caught in my throat and my heart hammers on my chest. My hand reaches for something that is no longer there. The battlefield lingers— the blood, the swords, the bodies, the feelings. It feels like I’ve just resurfaced from drowning in something I can’t remember. I know it isn’t real. I know it’s not really there. 

But it feels real.  Too real. 

A battlefield that does not exist. A war I have never fought. A future that hasn’t yet come—but somehow, I know it will. 

And I hate them. 

I hate the way these dreams drag me under, how they tear me from sleep and leave me gasping, drowning in horrors that refuse to let me go. 

I hate how they haunt me, whispering in the quiet spaces of my mind, turning every moment of peace. 

And what good are they?

They do not warn me. They do not prepare me. They only show me what I cannot stop. They’re just cruel, empty visions of a fate already written, forcing me to remember things that have not yet happened. 

What use is a memory of something I can never change?

These are not gifts. 

They are burdens. 

I despise waking up with them.

I despise knowing they will come again.

And I despise the fact that no matter how much I hate them… I can never make them stop.

It isn’t long until the battlefield begins to melt away. This is the way it has always been. A few moments later, I adjust. I begin to remember where I am. 

First comes the feeling of touch. 

Instead of feeling the ice cold air, I feel silk beneath my fingertips. My hands press against the sheets. Sheets that are warm against the creeping sunlight and impossibly soft against my skin. 

Second is the smell. 

Instead of the scent of blood that was logged in the back of my throat, I begin to smell the lingering scent of roses in the air. 

I exhale, shakily and force my fingers to unclench themselves.

Then finally… full consciousness.

The room around me is still, untouched by the horrors that had chased me from sleep. There are no swords scattered about, no bodies lingering. There’s just white walls, white walls with their delicate rose patterns of beauty and peace. 

The curtains remain drawn but not fully. There are slivers of sunlight that spill through.  Sunlight stretches across the wooden floor, spilling golden light onto the edge of my bed. 

 Some of them reach me, the warmth making me feel something real once again. Somewhere beyond, birds sing their morning tunes, sweet and indifferent to the battles that rage only in my dreams.

Then only now I realize I am home safe, I am back in my bedroom. For a moment more, I do not believe it. I expect it. 

I only know it’s real here when I hear a sharp knock at my door that startles me more awake. 

"Lady Aria, time to wake."

Portia. My head maid. 

I quietly groan, not quite ready to face the day. In fact, I dread it. I still feel my heart pounding in my chest. It’s struggling to calm itself. My limbs are heavy and my body sluggish. I don’t want to move. Instead of getting up to answer the door, I plop back down onto my pillows. 

The knock comes again but firmer this time. 

“Aria?” She calls again. 

I don’t answer but Portia enters anyway.

The soft click of the door closing is followed by the rustling of fabric as she moves about the room, pulling back the curtains with one decisive motion.

Sunlight floods in.

I flinch.

The gold is too bright, too warm—too much like the sky in my dreams.

A false warmth.

Portia turns to me after she opens the curtains. She walks to me and places a hand on my forehead. It startles me a bit but at the same time I feel comfort. 

“You were dreaming again.” It isn’t a question.

I clench my hands into fists then I run a hand through my hair, my fingers catching in red tangled strands. 

“It’s nothing.” I try to say. 

She didn’t argue. She never does. 

She knows about them. She’s just as lost as I was when it came to deciphering them. One day when I was younger, she caught me in the midst of one, a future memory that I no longer remember. She recalled that I was screaming in terror. She thought I was getting murdered but upon entering my bedchambers all she saw was my body thrashing under the covers, trapped in a restless sleep and unable to wake. 

Instead of commenting further she steps toward the wardrobe, pulling out a deep blue dress and laying it neatly at the foot of my bed.  

"Your lessons begin after breakfast," she says, smoothing out the fabric. "Lord Edgrin expects you in the library by mid-morning. And you will attend."

I groan and sink deeper into the blankets. "Do I have to?"

Portia gives me a look. "A lady of your station does not dismiss her responsibilities. If your father were here, he would have my head if he knew that you were skipping them."

A lady of my station. As if I need reminding.

I exhale slowly, swinging my legs over the side of the bed. The cold floor greets my bare feet, sending a sharp shiver up my spine. 

Then in a more comforting manner she says, “They’re just dreams my lady. Please get dressed, there’s food waiting for you in the dining commons.”

She’s wrong… they’re not just dreams. 

Portia watches me closely, until she has fully left my bedroom. 

She knows.

She knows that I do not feel like myself.

But she also knows that I will never admit it.

༺ ༻

At sixteen, I have learned that routine is the only thing that keeps me tethered to something real. My morning always follows the same pattern—dressing in the dresses that Portia picks for me, eating in the dining commons by myself,  attending my lessons and just existing. My family’s estate is as quiet as it has always been, but I find no peace in its silence.  Every time I walk through the halls, the paintings of my parents leave me no solace. 

My father’s study is where my lessons are held. It’s already prepared by the time I arrive. Stacks of books, parchment and ink pots lie in waiting. Lord Edgrin is already seated, glasses perched on the bridge of his nose, flipping through the pages of one of the worn out texts. He doesn’t look up as I take my seat.

"You're late," he mutters.

Portia clears her throat from behind me. "Only by a minute, my lord."

I hate history lessons.

Not because I find them difficult, but because they are the same stories, told the same way, with the same tired conclusions.

I glance at the open book before me— an account of the war twenty years past. The pages are filled with dates, names, battle strategies, and the same distant words that make war sound clean and necessary. 

But I know better.

There’s only one war that I know that still lingers on from these historic letters. The war between my home nation of Northford and our foreign enemy named Lochway and that war is anything but clean and necessary.

Instead of listening to my tutor, I think of the battlefield from my memory. I think of those bodies. The swords that surrounded me. I think of my father who’s at the frontlines of the battlefield right now and fighting. 

I miss him… my father. He left two years ago. He only wrote a couple of letters to me and after two years, they have ceased. 

The room feels too small, the walls too close. I tap my fingers against the edge of the table, restless energy thrumming beneath my skin.

Outside the window, the sun is too bright. The sky is too clear.

I close my eyes.

For a moment, I see gold fractured by storm clouds.

I inhale sharply and force the image away.

"Lady Aria?"

Lord Edgrin’s voice pulls me back. He watches me expectantly, one brow raised.

I scramble for the question I didn’t hear. "Uh…"

 ༺~༻

Lord Edgrin left by mid-noon. He wasn't very pleased. I had been ‘daydreaming’ again according to him. I had another meal and other lessons held by Portia since then. After my balancing lesson, I found myself in the study once more, drowning in more texts but I couldn’t pay much attention. 

I was bored. I grew tired of constantly learning. The more Portia read allowed me the antsy I began to feel. 

Duties of a wife.
Proper courtship.
The expectations of a noblewoman.

Then, as if the topic weren’t dull enough, she begins discussing resting practices between husband and wife.

I shudder. My stomach twists in revulsion, and for the first time today, I wish I had a blade—not for battle, but to cut off my own ears.

Instead, I turn toward the window, gaze drawn to the courtyard beyond. My father’s training grounds. The place where I first held a sword.

Instead of listening, I looked outside the window, I couldn’t help but look at the courtyard where the training grounds my father practiced on, used to it. I remember learning how to wield my first ever sword. Instead of having to worry about what to do for marriage, I imagine myself holding a sword again. I remembered what it felt like while holding a sword. I felt powerful, as if I didn’t need anyone beside me. 

Portia calls me out, “Aria, you’re not paying attention.” 

I groan and close my book on defeat. 

Portia adjusted the lace cuffs of her sleeves, a sign of her hesitation. She was a woman of routine, a firm believer in structure, and my request had thrown her off course. But I saw it—the way she studied me, the way her lips pressed into a thin line.  She wanted to say no.

I couldn’t let her.

I leaned forward, folding my arms over the book in front of me, eyes gleaming with excitement. Not too much, or she’d suspect something. Just enough to make her believe I needed this.

"Portia, I’ve been stuck in this estate for weeks," I said, my voice a touch too dramatic, but not untrue. "If I have to endure one more lesson on noble decorum, I will fling myself from the balcony."

Portia exhaled sharply through her nose. "You are being dramatic."

"Am I?" I countered, tilting my head. "Because I think my situation is rather dire. You read aloud from that book for two hours. Two. And you expected me to just sit there, absorbing every tedious word about the duties of a wife and—" I shuddered. "—things I would rather die than discuss?"

Portia crossed her arms. "The material is important for a young lady of your status."

"I’m sixteen!” I try to object but then I decide to take a different approach. “Then let’s say I am taking my education into my own hands," I said swiftly, sensing my opening. "I need to understand my people, don’t I? To be aware of the world outside these walls? How can I be expected to fulfill my ‘noble duties’ if I don’t even know what life in the capital is like?"

Portia’s gaze flickered toward the window, toward the sunlit rooftops of Northford’s capital beyond the estate walls.

The war had changed things. We both knew it. The unrest in the city, the whispers of discontent. It was not as it had been when I was younger, when my father would take me through the bustling streets without a care.

But that was why I needed to go.

I softened my voice, adding just a touch of longing. "I just want to see it again, Portia. Even if it’s different now. Even if we don’t stay long."

She sighed. "It isn’t wise—"

"You promised my father you would look after me, didn’t you?" I asked, tilting my head. "That includes my well-being, does it not?"

Portia narrowed her eyes, but I saw the moment she caved.

"Very well," she muttered, reaching for her cloak. "But only for a short while."

I grinned, already rising to my feet. "You won’t regret this, I promise."

She muttered something under her breath about how she already did, but I didn’t care.

I was going to the city.