Ren woke with a start, her breath ragged, her body trembling. The remnants of the nightmare clung to her mind—twisted, grotesque creatures stalking her through fog-filled streets that felt both familiar and impossibly distant. Yharnam. The name echoed in her mind, though she couldn’t remember why. It was always Yharnam.
The cold, musty air of Coerthas was nothing like the warmth of her bed, and yet something about it still felt... wrong. She sat up, staring at the faded wallpaper of her small room—its dull, peeling patterns reminiscent of the ornate Victorian halls she'd never seen, yet somehow knew deep inside. The soft creak of wood floors beneath her, the distant echo of the wind against her window—everything about this place felt like a world suspended between dreams and reality.
Her hands ached as if they'd been holding something sharp. Instinctively, her fingers curled, as if grasping the hilt of a weapon she couldn’t see. The memory of it—the cold, unforgiving steel—clung to her like a ghost, yet there was no weapon in sight, only shadows.
Ren blinked, shaking the lingering fog of the dream. She’d been having them for weeks, each one more vivid than the last—dreams of a city long forgotten. Yharnam. She couldn’t explain why it haunted her, why that name surfaced in her mind every time she awoke, but it did. The streets, drenched in mist and lined with towering, gothic architecture, loomed in her memory. It was as if she’d walked there before.
She didn’t belong there. She belonged here, in Eorzea, on an expedition as a historian. She’d come to uncover lost stories, ancient places long buried beneath the sands of time. Yet, when the darkness fell and the dreams came, Ren found herself in a world that seemed wrong.
Her body, however, knew something it should not. The grace of combat—fluid and precise. She didn’t know how she knew it, but she could feel it in her bones, an instinctive urge to fight. A scythe. She could picture it in her mind, a long, curved blade, sweeping through the air as easily as if she had wielded it for centuries.
Ren stood, the morning light filtering weakly through her curtains, casting long shadows that danced like specters. The chill of the room seeped into her skin, grounding her to the present. She had work to do. But beneath her scholarly duties, there was an undeniable pull—the lingering echo of Yharnam, the forgotten city, and a hunter’s life she couldn’t remember but could never escape.
Happy Building!
- RPHub.co Team