The Wandering Witch VOL. 1 - The Prelude Arc (COMPLETED)

4.1| Within the Cell

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C H E L L

In the depths of her consciousness, Chell dreamed about the night of the dead's disappearance. Or no... perhaps it was not a dream. Rather, it seemed more of a visit of a recent memory than a recollection, one still freshly engraved in her mind.

When it happened, there had been nothing to give her any signs or warnings. It had happened so suddenly that Chell was left clueless on what the meaning behind their vanishing entailed, or the fact that she had no idea what she would go through because of it. After all, they were the only ones who had always been there with her since her waking two years ago, the only ones who she could speak to and would answer in return.

Dead, they were often called by many. Ghosts.

    Spirits. They were the remnants of the deceased. Fragments of their souls that were left from their past mortal lives.

Their disappearance had happened only a mere three days ago, well before dawn, in an unnamed forest miles and miles away from the kingdom of Uldard. Chell recalled it vividly through the dream, the details filled with both life and realism. It was almost as if she had gone back in time.

The continent had still been engulfed in the night's darkness, except for a few streaks of red and violet cutting across the sky on the distant horizon, signifying the gradual ascent of the sun. Chell had been asleep at the base of an old withering tree, leaning on its trunk and using its roots to settle herself in a comfortable position. With her breathing so quiet, any person who would pass at that moment could easily mistake her for a part of the undergrowth if not for her gleaming white hair that stood out from the darkness, basking her figure in a dim glow. The forest was eerily quiet at that time, most of its inhabitants still in the realm of slumber. That was the reason how it was easy for Chell to hear the dead at the moment they whispered a single word faintly into her ear.

    "Snow."

She stirred immediately from her sleep the moment Chell heard them call for her. Still on the boundary of awake and asleep, she opened her eyes and listened to them as they spoke their next words.

"G—o—ri—nce—w—bl—d—"

Chell frowned slightly, sitting up from her position. She cleared her mind, shaking away the drowsiness from her head. The dead had a unique way of communicating. They often spoke not as a single voice, but rather, as a chorus of many. Whenever they made a conversation, dozens of different voices, pitches, accents, and diction combined together to form a single sentence. This was the reason why understanding the dead was hard for most people, even for those who had the talent of hearing them. However, that was not the case for Chell. Since she had their blessing, she had long been used to listening to them speak since her childhood days. She could easily understand what they wished to say at any given moment.

But not this time.

"—ri—oe—a—d,"

There was something wrong. At first notice, their voices seemed strained. Agitated. Too many of them were whispering different things at the same time, unlike the way they normally spoke. As a result, their words merged into an indecipherable noise that she could not understand. Chell strained her ears to hear their voices in clarity. Again, the dead spoke to her, but their words were blurred and distant, like a hundred people speaking from a far room. All she could make out were broken words. "Snow—chil—h—ri—rd."