Chapter 158: 158-Familiar stranger
Maisa opened her eyes. She couldn’t make sense of what she was seeing. The world was blurry.
It was not the ordinary kind of blur that came from waking too quickly, but something stranger, something that seemed to exist between her eyes and reality.
Everything was red: the walls, the ceiling, the furniture. Even the shadows seemed to bleed crimson at their edges.
Maisa blinked once, then twice, but the red remained. Her heart gave a strange, heavy beat.
"Where am I?"
She tried to move, but pain immediately shot through her body. A quiet gasp escaped her lips as she pushed herself upright, moving far too quickly.
The room spun, and Maisa grabbed the edge of the bed to steady herself. For a moment, she thought she was going to fall straight back down. She squeezed her eyes shut, then opened them again.
The red was fading slowly. The world began to return to normal, and colors seeped back into everything, though they still looked muted and distant, as if she were viewing the room through a thin veil.
Maisa swallowed, her breathing uneven, and looked around. She wasn’t in the mansion or the forest, and she definitely wasn’t beside the werewolf.
Her gaze moved across the unfamiliar room. It was old and not abandoned-old. There was a difference. The furniture had clearly been there for years, perhaps decades.
The wooden wardrobe standing against one wall had scratches along its edges, and its polished surface had lost some of its original shine.
A small table beside the bed carried the faint marks of age. Yet everything was remarkably well maintained. Nothing was broken. Nothing was covered in dust, and nothing appeared neglected. It was almost as though the room itself had been frozen in time and carefully preserved.
Maisa slowly turned her head. An old wooden chair sat near the window, its legs slightly uneven, as though one good push might send it collapsing, but it stood perfectly still.
The curtains hanging beside it were faded but clean, while a narrow bookshelf occupied one corner of the room, filled with books whose spines were worn from years of use.
Maisa stared at them. Something about the room felt wrong. Her fingers curled into the sheets. Then she remembered: the forest, the girl, the blood, those strange wolf ears, and the bite.
Maisa’s hand immediately went to her neck. Her fingertips found no puncture wounds, but she froze. The memory came rushing back. She had bitten the werewolf. The werewolf had bitten her. Then... the blood moon.
Maisa’s breathing stopped. Her eyes widened. "What... happened to me?"
She looked down at herself. There were no obvious signs of the battle: no blood soaking her clothes, no deep wounds, no shattered bones. But she remembered falling. She remembered the force that had torn them apart. She remembered hitting something hard and then nothing.
Maisa slowly lowered her hand. The room suddenly felt much colder. She looked toward the window, where the curtains moved slightly despite the absence of any breeze. Her eyes narrowed.
Something had changed. She could feel it. Maisa stared at her hands. For one brief second, her fingertips seemed to carry a faint red glow. She blinked, and it disappeared. Her heart began pounding.
"No..."
She looked toward the door. It was closed, very closed. For reasons she couldn’t explain, Maisa suddenly had the overwhelming feeling that someone, or something, was waiting on the other side.
She slowly swung her legs over the edge of the bed. Her feet touched the cold floor, and Maisa stood.
"Where is this place?"
Looking around, Maisa realized the room was far older than she was and not merely old but ancient.
The decorations and furniture looked as though they had survived for more than a thousand years.
The wood had darkened with age, the carvings along the bedposts had been worn smooth in places, and the walls carried the faint marks of countless years. Yet somehow, none of it had decayed. It was as though the room had been allowed to age without ever being allowed to die.
Maisa slowly sat up, but a sharp ache exploded through her skull. She winced and immediately clutched her head.
"Ah..."
The pain throbbed behind her eyes, deep and relentless, each pulse seeming to drive something deeper into her mind. She took several slow breaths before forcing herself off the bed.
The moment her bare foot touched the floor, a vicious chill shot straight through her body. Maisa recoiled.
It felt as though she had stepped onto pure ice or into something that had been waiting beneath it. She clenched her teeth and squeezed her eyes shut, trying to endure the sensation as it travelled up her leg and settled somewhere deep inside her bones.
Then something appeared in her mind. Maisa’s eyes snapped open, but the room was gone.
She was standing in a field where white flowers stretched endlessly in every direction, their delicate petals swaying beneath an invisible breeze. She had never seen them before.
Each flower had five perfectly formed petals, and tiny droplets of dew clung to their surfaces like diamonds. The silence was so complete that Maisa could hear her own heartbeat pounding in her ears.
Maisa slowly turned in place. "Where...?"
At the centre of the field stood a girl with long, snow-white hair flowing down her back. She was crouched beside one of the flowers, gently watering it from a small silver vessel.
Maisa stared. There was something strange about her; something powerful that made the air feel heavy around her.
"Hello?"
The girl stopped, and for several seconds, she did not move. Then she slowly lifted her head. Their eyes met, and Maisa’s entire body went rigid.
Those eyes, they were completely white. The moment they locked onto hers, Maisa felt as though the air had vanished from her lungs. Her instincts screamed at her to run, but she couldn’t move.
It was like being an ordinary bee that had accidentally flown into the territory of a queen, and the queen had noticed.
The pressure behind Maisa’s eyes intensified. Her skull felt as though it were being squeezed from the inside, and a sharp cry caught in her throat as she grabbed her head. "Who... are you?"
The girl studied her. For a moment, she said nothing. The silence stretched across the field, and even the flowers seemed to stop moving. Then, the faintest smile touched her lips.
"You must be Maisa."
Maisa’s breath caught.
"I’ve heard a lot about you," The girl’s smile faded. Her gaze travelled over Maisa as though searching for something hidden beneath her skin. "You are beautiful as described and I am looking forward to meeting you soon."
"But..." She stood, and the flowers around her seemed to bend away from her presence. "It’s not time for us to meet yet."
Maisa tried to step back. Her legs refused to move. The girl snapped her fingers, and that world shattered.
Maisa gasped and opened her eyes. She was back in the room, her foot still pressed against the icy floor. She stumbled backwards, clutching her head as the headache returned with renewed force. For one terrifying instant, she could still feel those white eyes staring through her.
"What... was that?"