From Gilded Chains to Unseen Love

Emily's POV

I woke to darkness.

Not silence - the kind of dark that breathes, whispering things you can't quite hear. My head pounded. My limbs felt like stone.

I tried to move. Heavy chains - iron ones, cold against my skin - bolted me to the wall behind me. My wrists and ankles were bound.

I wasn't in a hospital.

This wasn't the recovery room.

The last thing I remembered was the doctor's voice:

You'll sleep a little, and when you wake, the world will be waiting.

Well, it was.

But not the world I knew.

The air was thick with mold and rot. The faint flicker of firelight slipped through a grated door across the room. Stone walls bled dampness. I could smell old blood, dried, and something more primal.

My pulse kicked. "Hello?" I whispered. "Is someone there?"

No response.

Until I heard footsteps.

Heavy boots echoed against stone. The door creaked open.

A man stepped through-towering, broad, dressed in black leathers with a crimson sash and a silver emblem on his chest: a crescent moon coiled in serpents.

He didn't look like a doctor, or someone I'd recognize, or anything safe.

"You're awake," he said.

I stared, throat tight. "Where... where am I?"

He didn't answer right away. Instead, he crouched just outside my reach and studied me like I was something strange, something beneath him.

"This is the Kingdom of Opsia," he finally said, his tone flat, distant.

Opsia? I'd heard the name in whispers, in nightmares.

"There's a mistake," I croaked. "I shouldn't be here. Please - there has to be a mistake."

He tilted his head. "Everyone says that at first."

"What did I do? I didn't-"

"Enough." His voice cut sharp and final. "You'll find out what you are when the prince decides."

The prince?

Before I could ask anything else, he stood and walked out, slamming the door shut behind him.

Darkness swallowed me again.

But now, it pressed on my chest like a weight. Every creak in the stone, every flicker of shadow felt like a warning.

Why was I here?

My heart twisted. Flashes of my father's strange behavior flickered - the way he'd avoided me for days, the sudden desperation, the quiet phone calls. Was this his plan all along?

Before I could process it, the door groaned again. Another figure entered - different this time.

A woman. I think.