Air…

The young woman breathed heavily as she wearily opened her amber eyes and squinted into the darkness around her.

As her eyes grew accustomed to the light, she saw flaming torches illuminating a cavernous hall of black stone. The meager light cast eerie shadows that flickered and danced on the stone walls. Only then did she notice the host of shrouded figures encircling the marble slab she had been lying on.

With a shriek of fright and surprise, she bolted upright only to find herself bound to a stone table. Thick, iron chains bound her arms and legs while a heavy collar of metal was clasped around her throat. She tugged frantically at the chains until her fingers became numb at the futile effort.

Gasping for breath out of the sudden exhaustion, she looked around with terror – startling herself as she took in each breath hungrily.

“I –,” she stuttered, her voice raspy like sandpaper, “I can breathe… I haven’t – breathed – for so long. For as long as I can remember…”

She grasped the metal ring around her neck to allow her throat to take in more of each blessed breath.

It felt as if it was only yesterday… She thought wistfully, chest heaving as she ran her cold and shaky fingers across the cold marble.

I can still remember everything.

She jerked in surprise as a warm palm pressed on her shoulders as if trying to make her lie back down on the stone; her head whipped around and surveyed the hooded people around her.

“I am – was – dead,” she declared, her eyes darting from one hooded figure to the next, “I died when I was – at least I think I was – eighteen. What am I doing back in the plane of the living? Am I really alive again?”

Her voice rose as panic rushed through her like a splash of icy water, “Or is this Utröthka? Am I to be punished for the deed I have done? Tell me!”

She shrieked in frustration and thrashed against that chains that bound her. The iron clattered against each other and echoed around the hall, resounding in the deafening silence.

“Hush, my dear,” a woman’s voice crept from somewhere by the girl’s feet. She felt the man’s hand forcing her to lie down once more. Instead, she remained unmoved and fixed her eyes intently at the shrouded woman near her.

In a moment of disgust, she could vaguely make out a sickly, green-tinged expanse of skin under the folds of the dark cloak she was wearing.

“What do you want from me?” the young woman shrieked, her fingers were shaking uncontrollably, so was the rest of her body; and her eyeballs rolled frenetically in their sockets, “Who are you?” she yelled again. The woman merely laughed softly.

“We need your – help,” the woman said silkily, putting emphasis on the last word a little more forcefully than she had intended.

“You’re not answering my question. And what help are you talking about? I cannot offer you anything. I neither know nor have anything,” the young woman said nervously, the restored beating of her heart sending blood back to her frozen limbs.

“You need not give anything to us,” the woman replied, “Actually we will give you something you have been craving for the most.”

The girl’s heart quickened, it was a wonderful yet frightening feeling to feel blood once more. This emotion, accompanied by what seems to become an irresistible offer, threatened to overwhelm her. She hastened to say something, but her voice came out as a desperate croak.

“What do you know about me?” she asked the woman quietly. The shrouded figure walked around the stone table and came to her side.

The girl fidgeted as the woman slid a long, green finger along her cheek.

Appalled, she swatted the hand away gingerly, rubbing her skin as if it would burn from the woman’s touch.

The woman grinned at her from under the hood. Dark eyes glinted menacingly with a grin that showed rows of tiny, pointed teeth.

“Such ferocity,” the woman breathed almost admiringly. The girl glared at her as she fought back the panic that rose within her.

“Answer me, woman,” she said with as much conviction as she could muster, “Who are you and what do you know about me?”

“Our identity is of little importance to you,” the woman said, walking away from her side and around the table once more.

“But we know that you have been craving, yearning for revenge – sweet, unadulterated revenge,” the woman said loudly, waving her hands with a flourish.

She turned back to the girl so sharply that the latter screamed in alarm.

“Something that was rightfully yours was taken from you!” she continued, “Now, what do you make of that?”

The girl’s jaw tensed. It was too much to handle.

Revenge.

The feeling was renewed within her. Now it boiled inside her, searing her veins with a malevolent lust for retribution. Filling her with rage that no amount of words can describe.

For innumerable years she had promised revenge to the person who ruined her future and moved her to take her own life out of misery.

Her head swam before her in a sudden fit of dizziness and she fell back on the slab, sending a cloud of a millennia’s dust to envelop her.

She lay shivering and covered with dust and cold sweat.

The filth irritated her eyes, but the girl didn’t give a damn.

Now was her chance to settle a score.

A strange and dangerous feeling of giddiness took the place of her insecurity. She shifted jerkily in her position.

“Since you know of so much,” she whispered almost inaudibly, “tell me what I must do.”

The woman chuckled derisively.

“Such determination!” she exclaimed, cackling in an unnaturally high voice. She continued to speak, but the girl’s mind was somewhere else as several strong hands unbound her and helped her to her frozen feet.

In a distant time, in a familiar place, a handsome prince came to her life and promised her immortality.

But after a moment’s deception, she had found herself miserable, without a trace of hope left in her.

She can still remember the noose beckoning to her from the branch of an old oak tree.

He must pay for his deceit… she thought savagely. The prince with the eyes of the stars… He must pay for this, what he did to me, for what he left me for…

This is the only way I can avenge my own death…

Trade his cursed soul for mine.