Liliana shot up from her bed, fighting off the twisted tangle of sweat-soaked sheets pinning her arms to her body. A scream was stuck in her throat and a name tasting of acidic guilt lay heavy on her tongue, barred from her lips by a wall of gritted teeth. Air rushed into her lungs as her wide, panicked eyes roved over the dark of her room, picking out familiar furniture. Her heart beat against the walls of her ribs like the wings of a trapped hummingbird. Her chest heaved as she struggled to gasp in the air her lungs craved around the heavy emotions clogging her throat.

Tears she didn’t feel were falling down her face like a waterfall, blurring her vision and further dampening the ruined sheets as her body shook. Her chest felt constricted, and as she gasped in each new breath, it felt like someone had wrapped her in chains that were tightening on her, collapsing her lungs.

“Lili!” a voice called out from somewhere far away as Liliana’s hands clamped tightly to her arms, her nails biting deeply into flesh, the hot blood feeling like fire against her too cold skin.

Bones creaked and muscles screamed from the iron grip she held on her arms, but she couldn’t release herself, couldn’t even feel the pain. The darkness of the room felt like it was swallowing her whole, tunneling her vision already hindered by the tears further. There was a rushing, ringing sound in her ears that sounded almost like screams, like the screams trapped in her throat that she couldn’t give voice to.

“Lili! Listen to me. Listen kit. You don’t have to speak, but tell me please, five things you can see, dear heart. Do that for me, please.” That far-away voice was back, somehow not impeded by the screams ringing in her ears.

She couldn’t recognize the voice, her mind too flooded with fear, panic and the need to scream, to run, to hide, to get away now. But something deeper than the fear recognized the voice, something core to who she was, urged her to listen so her eyes flitted around, locating items in the dark as she put names to them.

“Sheets. Desk. Bed. Books. Door.” Liliana didn’t speak, couldn’t speak past her locked jaw and that horrid acid coated name that still rested heavily on her tongue.

“Good, good job, dear one. You did so well. Now four things you can touch.” The voice didn’t seem bothered by her mental response. It’s, no, his voice was warm, filled with love and concern and somehow it helped. It gave her the strength to drop her hands from her arms and flex her fingers, to categorize the textures she felt.

“Sheets, scales, fur, my nightgown,” Liliana listed the feelings, and with each new word her breathing evened a bit more and the darkness receded from her vision. She was still shaking and drowning under bruising waves of fear, but she didn’t feel like she was being washed out to sea now. She could see the bottom of the water.

“Very good, Lili. You did well. Now three things you can hear.” The voice was back, pushing her on.

“Wind, I can hear my breath, and hissing,” Liliana responded after a moment of listening, the sound of screams in her ears quieting to whispers, her breath coming in easier now, almost unhindered. The clog in her throat was falling away, dissolving and letting her breathe with far more ease. Her arms were aching now, a sharp and dull pain throbbing in them.

“Good, I’m so proud of you, dear heart. We’re almost there. Now, can you tell me two things you can smell?” The voice directed her and automatically Liliana drew in a deep breath through her nose, scrunching her nose slightly when she realized what she was smelling.

“Copper- blood. And sweat.” Liliana told the voice, Polaris she realized as the waves of panic in her mind began to calm, a tumultuous sea turning slowly into a placid pond, steadying almost in time with the slowing of her heart.

“One more thing for me, Lili. Tell me one thing you can taste,” Polaris urged her, his voice calm and patient and so full of love it helped ease the tension in her shoulders as she drooped in the bed.

“Blood,” Liliana said, her voice hoarse though she hadn’t been screaming. It wasn’t quite right. Her mouth tasted like it had been coated in acid and ashes, but there was the unmistakable tang of copper there too, sharp and metallic on her tongue.

“Oh Lili,” Polaris said, his voice sad, so soft it felt like a gentle caress in her mind as he pushed his body more firmly against hers.

She blinked and saw he had wrapped her in a wing, lying across her lap as if to hold her down, or ground her. On her other side, Lelantos was half in the bed, his enormous head pressed to her side. A rasping of scales on skin told her Nemesis was wrapped around her arm, and a gentle tickling feeling alerted her to the serpent licking at the blood streaked on her skin, still pouring down her arms.

Liliana raised a shaking hand, wincing at the sharp pain the movement caused, and pressed gently against aching skin, surprised to find the gouges ripped into her skin that were slowly healing. She hadn’t even known she’d hurt herself. Hadn’t realised the damage she could do to herself when she wasn’t in her right mind.

“Thank you,” Liliana rasped out as she dropped her hand.

She’d need to clean up, but for now she didn’t want to move from the safe nest of bodies she was in. The smell of copper was heavy in the air, making nausea roll painfully in her stomach. Both from the smell and the knowledge she had just earned through horrible means. Liliana’s Strength was considerably higher than her Vitality and she could do severe damage to herself, so easily if she wasn’t careful, and she hadn’t been careful. She was lucky she hadn’t amputated herself; she was strong enough to do it. Liliana was also lucky she would heal before classes, or her friends would think she’d been attacked in her room.

The gouges in her skin weren’t clean or superficial. They were deep, going past skin and into muscle. It was only thanks to [Pain Resistance] being at level 101 that she wasn’t screaming in agony right now. It still hurt, but it was like the pain was dulled by pain killers. She was aware of it, highly aware now that her mind wasn’t a mess of chaotic panic, and it was uncomfortable, but it wouldn’t incapacitate her from the pain. The damage made it difficult to move her arms, though.

“No thanks needed, dear heart. We are of one soul. We will always be here for you. No matter what, if we face beast, man, or the monsters lurking in your own mind. We will be here, always.” Polaris told her, voice soft and warm and full of heavy promises, linking them all together tightly.

“You are ours. We are yours. We protect our own. Even from themselves,” Nemesis agreed, nosing against Liliana’s arm, above the wounds thankfully, before setting back to her self-appointed job of cleaning Liliana.

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“Protect. Family. Always.” Lelantos, his words far less eloquent but no less full of feeling.

Liliana felt her lip tremble as new tears filled her eyes, overflowing as she sniffed pitifully, full of too many emotions for her exhausted body to process. Love inflated her heart, and she leaned forward to bury her face in Polaris’ fur, weak sobs shaking her body. One hand gripped his fur, burying deep in the silky strands, the other rested on Lelantos’ head, threading through the tiger’s coarser fur.

Her heart ached though, along with the love, because her entire family wasn’t here and she wanted it to be so badly. She had three pieces of her soul pressed tightly to her, but the other parts of the puzzle weren’t. Some were lost forever, some were too far away to be brought to her, and others were close, so very close, but still out of reach. Yet she wanted them none the less, and a childish wish pressed against her lips, bittersweet on her tongue.

I want my brother.

It wasn’t the only wish she had, but it was the only one she could admit to. The other one was too painful to admit to, so she drowned it in her mind, buried it deep under the ground where it couldn’t come back up, because it was a wish that could never be fulfilled.

When her tears dried, Liliana took a deep breath, sniffling past a stuffed nose that was still leaking snot and blinked burning eyes that felt like they weighed a thousand pounds. She was so tired, exhausted mentally and emotionally, but she knew she wouldn’t be able to fall asleep again. The mere thought of going back to sleep, where the nightmares prowled, sent a shiver of fear through her. Once she had one nightmare, she’d have more. There wasn’t a point in trying to sleep again, else she end up in this same position in another hour or two.

It took a little focus to bring up the time, half past the third bell. So she’d gotten about four hours of sleep, then. She freed one hand to rub at her eyes as she sat back up, wincing again at the pain. A quick check let her know she hadn’t just shredded her arms, she’d broken bones. That was why it was taking so long to heal. Bones took longer than skin to heal. Broken bones added a de-buff that slowed the entire process, the same way a sliced artery would add a bleeding de-buff that would prolong healing. Her arms would be healed before she saw anyone, but it would still leave her injured for another hour or so. Liliana activated [Regeneration] to try to speed up the process somewhat.

As she lifted her head, her eyes locked onto the desk. The reason she had this particular nightmare tonight. Sitting innocently on the desk was a half-written letter. Addressed to Silas, it talked about her first week at school. On its own, it wouldn’t cause any trouble. But it was the thought that had come to her halfway through the letter. The reminder that there had once been someone else she would’ve sent the letter to. Someone she would’ve sent the letter to before her first day had even concluded. Someone who would never read another letter again.

Liliana looked away, feeling almost like she was running away. But she couldn’t deal with anymore feelings right now. She felt like she was held together with spider silk, liable to break into a million pieces at the first bit of pressure. Liliana closed her eyes for a moment, dragging in a steadying breath before she opened her eyes and activated [Shine]. Light bloomed above her, illuminating the room. Her abused eyes winced at the sudden brightness, but now everything was back to being colored, rather than the monochrome of [Night Vision].

Liliana looked down at herself and almost canceled the spell. There was far more blood than she expected, even with the overwhelming scent of it tainting every breath she drew in. Her arms were more red than tanned skin, patches of golden hued skin peaking out rarely between sticky dark crimson and drying rusty brown. Her sheets looked like they’d been subject to a macabre tie-dye job, more red than white at this point.

She couldn’t see the red on Polaris’ fur, but the stuck together clumps shining in the light with still wet blood told her he needed a bath as badly as she did. Nemesis, who was still wrapped around Liliana’s arm and stubbornly cleaning her, was perhaps the most coated in blood, her brown-green scales unseen under the coating, and her white head a startling crimson, the petals of her hood were less obviously tinted, already being a bright pink. Lelantos was the least affected, streaks of red marring his iridescent fur, but nothing a quick cleaning wouldn’t fix.

“Bathroom, come on.” Liliana said as she shivered.

Now that she wasn’t in a panic, she could feel how cold she was, the sweat and blood-soaked sheets only serving to further chill her body. She couldn’t bear to sit in this mess for a moment longer, so even though it caused sharp stabs of pain, she rose from the bed with the assistance of Lelantos and Polaris propping her up. Her legs, though they’d suffered no damage, were as weak and clumsy as a newborn fawn’s.

It took longer than it normally would’ve for her to get to the bathroom, and Lelantos couldn’t follow her, too large to easily fit through the small door. Polaris alone bore most of her weight until she could carefully lower herself to sit by the tub. Polaris used his muzzle to turn on the water as Liliana trailed a blood crusted hand through the water, tinting the clear liquid pink.

Liliana fought with Polaris for a few minutes when the tub had filled, wanting him to clean up first, but the kitsune was insistent and she didn’t have the energy to argue, really. So she slipped into the tub and hissed as the hot water stung the slow to heal gashes on her arms. The blood wasn’t flowing from them anymore, scabbed up unnaturally fast thanks to [Regeneration]. Small mercies. Nemesis swam through the water, ducking down beneath to clean her own scales before wrapping around Liliana’s neck. Liliana tilted her head back, closing her eyes as she let the warm water soothe her aching body.

It was over an hour later that Liliana emerged with a damp Polaris on her heels, but she walked with her own power and the gashes on her arms were nothing but thick angry red lines, scars that would fade over the course of the next few hours until they were nothing but silver lines on her body, joining the countless others that littered her skin. Health regen and [Regeneration] could heal many injuries, but there was always something left behind for the worst of them. The most dire and potentially fatal left the most severe scars, as if it was the System’s way of reminding them for all their gained strength, they would always be mortal.

Liliana cleaned up her bed, gathering sheets and blankets and leaving them in the hamper that was in each room. The hamper was linked to a laundry room somewhere in the Academy where staff would clean the clothes and linens before sending them back to the students in a little cubby next to the bathroom. It was fascinating magic and on any other day, Liliana might try to examine to figure out how it worked, but today she was just glad it meant the evidence of her night wouldn’t be there for anyone else to see.

She grabbed the spare set of linens and only paused a moment to stare at her mattress, unblemished by the blood, before she shook her head with a mutter of ‘magic’ and made her bed. Perhaps the biggest adjustment was the fact she had to make her own bed again, after living the life of a pampered noble for years and before that, a hospital bed bound invalid. Making her own bed was a chore she had little familiarity with. But she’d figured it out, eventually. It wasn’t as pretty as what the maids at the manor could do, but it was serviceable.

Liliana walked around her room after she made her bed, tapping on the mage lights to turn them on. They turned on automatically at the 6th bell, but it wasn’t even fifth bell yet. She canceled [Shine] and began to dress in her uniform. When she finished, she looked around, unsure of what to do now. One hand reached up to Nemesis, still wrapped around her neck, and stroked the smooth scales and petal like hood of her bond. She rubbed her other hand across her face before grimacing. She probably looked a mess. Her next task decided, Liliana went back to her bathroom, looking into the mirror for the first time that day.

I do look like shit. Liliana decided as she looked at herself. Her tanned skin looked almost sallow, far too pale beneath the golden tones. Her eyes looked bruised, dark purple circles under them and still swollen from her tears. The sapphire blue of her eyes shone in contrast to the broken blood vessels filling the whites of her eyes, almost beautiful in a twisted kind of way. At least she didn’t look starved, not anymore. It had taken a long time after That Day for her to go back to eating with any regularity, and for months she’d looked into mirrors only to see a shell of the girl she’d once been. But now she could at least say self imposed starvation wasn’t one of her many issues. Under her sickly skin, her face held a healthy weight.

Liliana sighed and activated [Adjust], gently layering an illusion over her face, erasing the dark circles and hiding the swelling. Red tinted sclera slowly bleached back to white, and her skin regained its tawny beige complexion. By the time she was done, she looked like a normal sixteen-year-old girl, and not one who had spent her night trapped in a nightmare, only to wake into a panic attack that ended with her seriously injured at her own hands.

Liliana left the bathroom after throwing her hair up into a simple ponytail, with no energy for anything more elaborate. She stared at the letter on her desk for a long moment before snatching a book off her desk and settling on the floor, resting against Lelantos. Polaris settled down, laying across her legs, his weight comforting. As the sun rose in the distance, Liliana quietly narrated the history book she was reading out loud to her bonds as she waited for the day to begin, trying her hardest to forget how it started, to shove the nightmares deep, deep down.