[[౨ৎmusique ౨ৎ ]
During the Hunt
As competitive as Amani was, she found herself in an unfamiliar state of inertia. The fierce, electric pulse that usually surged through her veins, the hunger for victory and domination, was strangely absent. How unlike her. But the dreams—oh, the dreams—had been clawing at her, suffocating her in their cryptic urgency, pulling her deeper into a world that felt both distant and impossibly close. It was as though the voices that haunted her slumber were not merely fragments of a restless mind but something older, darker. They whispered to her, gentle but relentless, begging her to listen… but to what?
She couldn’t tell you. And therein lay the problem.
The uncertainty gnawed at her like a fever, coiling in her temples until it became a dull, persistent throb. She couldn’t concentrate, couldn’t muster the energy to be who she was supposed to be—the Amani everyone knew. She had even—God forbid—considered reaching out to her family, something that felt both shameful and dangerous. Surely they would understand, help her interpret the meaning behind the nightmares. But no, even the thought was met with resistance from within. The dreams themselves seemed to hiss at her for even considering it. And that familiar, rational voice in her head—the one that still clung to control in moments of chaos—warned her against it. Her parents wouldn’t understand. They would be concerned, of course, concerned enough to whisk her away from Wyndham and lock her behind the gilded bars of their protection.
No. That couldn’t happen. She could not leave Wyndham. Whatever was unraveling inside her, she would solve it here. Alone.
Amani exhaled, tilting her head back, letting it rest against the rough, cool stone of the courtyard wall, her eyelids fluttering shut. The hum of students in the distance, the low murmur of their voices, the scuff of feet on pavement—it all seemed a world away, muted beneath the persistent pulse of her own haunted thoughts. She stood on the edge of something, she could feel it—just one step away from some terrible, unknown revelation. But what? What was she standing on the brink of?
The dreams had started to blur the line between waking and sleep. They were not merely disjointed flashes of fantasy but something much more vivid, much more real. She would wake from them drenched in sweat, her heart thudding as though she’d been running for miles. Dark places, shadowed figures that dissolved as soon as she tried to focus on them. And always, always, that feeling of something looming just beyond her reach, of something coming for her. And that voice—so familiar it made her shiver.
Please, remember. Help me.
Her hands clenched into fists, knuckles white against the strain. The feeling of helplessness made her blood boil. She wasn’t one to let life slip through her fingers. No, Amani was the master of her fate. She bent the world to her will, not the other way around. But now… she felt adrift, powerless in a way she hadn’t known before.
Not that she would let anyone see that.
Pushing herself away from the wall, she straightened, forcing her breathing to slow, her jaw to unclench. The scavenger hunt. The next clue. Focus on that, she told herself. Maybe the task would distract her, give her something tangible to latch onto. She turned sharply, her mind already racing ahead, the mental map of Wyndham spinning in her thoughts as she set off toward the next location.
But then—impact.
She collided with someone, a solid, unexpected force that jolted her out of her reverie. Her reflexes kicked in, and she snapped, the words flying from her lips before she could think. “Watch where you’re going!”
Her heart pounded with the sudden rush of adrenaline, her frustration flaring. But then her gaze flickered upward, and everything in her world slowed, her breath catching in her throat.
Him.
Her brown eyes widened, fear and anxiety twisting in her chest like a knife. She stepped back instinctively, her pulse quickening for an entirely different reason now. The face before her, the one she had spent years trying to forget, now brought a flood of memories crashing over her—memories she had buried so deep she thought they would never resurface. But there he was, standing in front of her, the ghost of her past, dredging it all up with one look.
In that single moment, it was as though the years melted away. She was back in high school, standing beside him, their laughter echoing in the hallways, their hands brushing as they passed each other notes. He had been everything to her once, her confidant, her anchor. And then—that day.
She had gotten sick. A sickness that spiraled into something far worse than anyone had imagined. She had fallen into a coma, lost to the world for what felt like an eternity. When she woke, so much had changed. They told her of his betrayal. They said he had done things while she lay unconscious, things she could hardly believe—but the look in his eyes when she confronted him afterward, when she returned to this world, had been enough. The cold, distant gaze. The silence. He had let the school—no, let her—fill with hate, with anger. And she had let it consume her, because what else was there to do when the person you trusted most turned out to be a stranger?
She swallowed hard, her throat dry.
She wanted to run away, but it was too late, their paths had already crossed again. Well, no, he had crossed her path again, she was here first, he had not been in this school before, she would know about it and now he was sure–dark hair, slightly bruised(whoever did, was an angel sent from heaven) and dark eyes.
“What… are you doing here?” she asked, her voice strained, laced with the bitterness of old wounds.