Free Web NovelChapter 196: I Saw a Nightmare
[Content Warning]: This Chapter contains disturbing imagery, and emotionally heavy themes involving family trauma. Reader discretion is advised.
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’....Not this nightmare again...’
The warmth began to drain before she noticed. The marble floor beneath her bare feet, once sunlit and almost tender to the touch, cooled into something stark and unfeeling.
Vanessa blinked terrifyingly.
Her eyes fluttered rapidly in sheer denial. Her nightgown, once colored in soft lavender and woven through with violet flowers, bled of its colours. Slowly, until all that remained was a pale and lifeless white.
A ghost of itself.
The lavender scent, once sweet and calming, dissolved into dry and metallic — the faint trace of blood and smoke.
She turned, but the garden was no longer there, and slowly, the eerie silence pressed in.
Then... clang!
A sharp, deliberate echo from far away. The sound of metal boots meeting stonenwas getting louder and closer. Steady as a clock, but without mercy.
Vanessa’s breathing grew ragged.
Her feet began to move on their own. Pattering across the stone floor of the manor, frantically as the cold began to bite. Her step grew louder than the last, the house itself was shouting her presence to whatever thing marched in the distance.
"Mom?"
Her voice emerged small and uncertain.
The corridor swallowed it whole as no answer came.
"Papa...?"
Still, only the sound of boots marching.
Her heart began to pound quicker.
"ANNA?!"
The cry tore from her throat, but no familiar voice answered her call yet again. No warm hand reached for hers. The certainty that someone would always come when she called — vanished entirely.
She ran faster now, her breath coming in thin, frightened bursts. The familiar hallways of the Eldrienne manor, the place she had spent her entire life within, no longer felt like home.
The elegant archways that had once welcomed her now appeared subtly distorted, shifting whenever she looked away for even a moment. The walls felt taller, while the shadows felt deeper.
Fear clawed at her heart.
Everywhere she looked, she only found nightmares.
Especially the portraits lining the walls.
Once, they had depicted generations of House Eldrienne — proud ancestors, smiling family members, faces she had passed countless times without a second thought.
Now those same faces stared back at her with dreadful gazes.
Their eyes were gone.
Where painted irises and pupils should have been, there remained only hollow voids filled with darkness. Thick black ink seeped from those empty sockets, sliding slowly down their cheeks in glistening trails before dripping onto the ornate frames below.
The sight made her stomach twist. And yet the most terrifying part was not their appearance. But it was the way they were watching her. Every empty gaze followed her movements as she sprinted down the corridor. She could feel their attention pressing against her back.
Watching her run.
Or to be more precise, urging her to RUN!
And so, she ran with everything her small body could give, fleeing down a corridor that seemed to have no end. Her voice broke with each name she called. Each plea rang thinner than the last.
’Anna... I’m scared. Where are you...?’
The thought echoed through her trembling mind.
Why was her heart beating so fast?
Why did every breath hurt?
Then, she found the courtyard door open.
Vanessa’s feet slowed before stopping entirely. For reasons she could not explain, a terrible feeling settled inside her heart. Beyond the archway lay the courtyard she knew so well.
At the center stood a raised stone platform.
Upon it knelt two figures.
The sound of rattling chains echoed softly through the wind.
Vanessa froze.
The figures’ clothing hung in tatters. Blood stained the fabric in countless places, while heavy chains bound their arms and shoulders. Their bodies sagged beneath exhaustion, their heads lowered.
For a moment, she could not recognize them.
Then the wind shifted, carrying with it the faint rattle of chains as it swept through the courtyard. Dark hair, tangled with dirt and caked in dried blood, lifted beneath the breeze, revealing a face Vanessa never wanted to see there.
Vanessa’s eyes widened.
’Papa?’
The man whose laughter could brighten even the darkest days, the man who had once seemed untouchable, now knelt upon the stone platform with slumped shoulders and weary eyes. He no longer resembled the proud lord she remembered, but a man slowly breaking beneath the weight of a world that had shown him no mercy.
Beside him knelt another figure.
Vivienne.
Her mother.
Even now, despite the bruises staining her skin and the chains binding her wrists behind her back, a trace of that familiar elegance remained. Yet the sight only made the scene more unbearable.
She wasn’t supposed to look like this. frёewebηovel.cѳm
Neither of them were.
Then, slowly, Vivienne lifted her head.
As their eyes met, the world seemed to stop for her. Even the distant sound of marching boots faded into the background.
Vanessa could not move.
What’s... happening?
Why are both of her parents being tied up?
Why is this happening to them?
The questions echoed endlessly inside her head, yet no answers came. Every part of her wanted to look away to deny what was unfolding before her.
And yet she couldn’t.
Some instinct deep within her refused to let her avert her gaze. Because somehow, somewhere deep in her heart...
She knew that if she looked away now, she would regret it forever.
Somehow, through the grime, the agony, the coming end — they managed to see her daughter for the last time. And in that one fleeting moment, something passed between them.
"It’s okay, Vanessa.... You’ll be fine...."
Hearing that, her heart tightened.
"...I’m sorry."
Why did her father say that?
Her mother’s tear-lined gaze softened.
Then a voice, unfamiliar and sharp, tore through the courtyard. "Lord Damien Eldrienne, by decree of the Crown, has been found guilty of high treason—"
Treason?
"—and with that, your execution shall be carried out under the cover of night."
The words were meaningless to her. She didn’t understand back then.
What was treason? freewёbn૦νeɭ.com
What law had her father broken?
What crime had her mother committed?
None of this made sense. It couldn’t.
Her father taught her how to ride a horse. Her mother braided her hair each morning. They gave bread to the poor. They smiled at their servants. They never raised their voices in anger, never held cruelty in their hands!
So, what’s going on here!?
’Someone... help, please stop it. Please stop them.’
She opened her mouth to cry out... but no sound came.
’No, please. Don’t—’
But once nightfall came, the executioner’s blade was already in motion.
A single, gleaming arc fell.
Then, the sky turned crimson and Vanessa’s world became red. A spray of blood fanned across the stones with a precise, elegant curve.
Their heads fell and rolled until...
They stopped inches from her bare feet, their eyes still open, still seeing her. Vanessa collapsed as her knees gave way, and she crumpled like a marionette whose strings had been cut.
Her voice broke the silence at last.
Not a scream, but a sound rawer than that.
"P-papa...?"
She crawled forward with shaking limbs, reaching with small, trembling fingers.
"Mo-mother...?"
She brushed against the ends of her mother’s hair. Tears slid silently, her gaze trembled and unfocused, clinging to shapes she no longer understood, as though searching for her parents’ faces in the blur.
Even in this foolish nightmare, she could no longer remember their faces correctly.
’...This isn’t true.’
That was what she thought at that time.
If she admitted what her eyes told her, then the world would end here, at her bare feet.
Though, honestly, it already was.
Then, the guard seized her. Rough hands yanked her from the ground as though she were nothing more than a scrap to be discarded.
Vanessa screamed desperately.
"PAPA!!!"
"MOMMAA!!!!"
"Quiet!!" the man snapped.
"You’ll be dealt with later."
She screamed again, struggling, kicking, but her strength was nothing. Her cries were unanswered. And in her final glance, before the black swallowed her whole, she saw it:
The manor...
Her home was burning.
All of it drowned in fire, eaten alive by flame and smoke. Everything that had belonged to her, everything that had once made her world warm, safe and whole—
—Was gone.
The only thing she remembered in her nightmare was that her sister was not there during that time.
’Anna.... where are you?’
Where...
Where was your pinky-promise?
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[Chapter 196: I Saw a Nightmare]
