While Morana continued to walk on the dark path in front of her she suddenly heard a voice
"No...No."
When Morana followed after the voice it became louder and she knew she was getting close.
But in the end, the result wasn't what she expected at all.
What she saw wasn't one of her companions but a young boy about the same age as her with light gray hair curled up on the ground with closed eyes and muttering to himself as if he was seeing a nightmare.
"No no."
No matter how hard Morana tried to wake him up it was all pointless.
Soon she heard footsteps and two figures came into her sight.
"Rana?" One of them asked.
They were Emir and Zoel. They didn't find anything and managed to meet up finally finding her as well.
Zoel then looked at the boy curled up on the ground.
"Leonard." He rushed at young Leonard with clear worry written on his face.
"What's wrong with him?" Asked Emir.
Noticing that her brother had some kind of idea what was going on she didn't beat around the bush and directly asked him.
"Do you know anything?"
At first, Zoel didn't answer, just lost in his own thoughts, then he sighed heavily and started explaining.
"This place is the Montague family's restricted area. It has a nickname "Nightmare Caves of Montague"
"As you already know, Leonard and Sophia are twins from the direct line of the Montague family. Sophia is older, while Leonard is younger.
Leonard is kind and quiet and when he was young he used to be bullied secretly. He didn't speak, so no one knew about this until the accident when he was nine years old.
His bullies threw him in the family's restricted caves and he was only found after a whole week.
It was a miracle that he even survived."
After Zoel spoke, Morana's expression couldn't help turning dark and became even grimmer after she heard Zoel's next words.
"Hundreds of years ago caves were used to throw living prisoners in here and they used special enchantments to trap the prisoners in nightmares, this place turned into hell on land. Even the dead souls had no way to leave the place so they stayed here fighting and absorbing each other, penetrating any new prisoner's mind and eating them from inside.
The nightmares? They are just the beginning, there are things way worse in here."
"Ahhhhhhh."
Emir who couldn't help but scream from fright managed to draw both Morana's and Zoel's attention.
But their cold expressions soon turned into disgust when they saw Emir's snot-covered face.
Emir no longer knew what was more frightening, Zoel's words or Morana and Zoel themselves.
'Later, definitely the latter.' He soon managed to come up with the answer and joined Leonard in curling up on the ground.
And while one child and one hunk continued to curl up on the ground muttering in fright the sister-brother duo stood on the side ignoring the ridiculous situation and trying to come up with a solution.
Morana's last two methods couldn't be used on Leonard. Even if she was an emotionless madman she was smart and knew it wouldn't work.
After some thinking, Morana's eyes finally sparkled with mischief.
"I know what to do." She said as she looked at Zoel with confidence.
Looking at his baby sister's bright smile Zoel couldn't help getting an ominous feeling.
'I can't beat this kid up doesn't mean I can't beat other people up.' Thought Morana with her bright smile.
If only Zoel knew what she was thinking about
"For now we need to wake Leonard up. We can't help him if he is passed out." Said Zoel.
"Yeah you work on that while I work on my theory," answered Morana and without waiting for anyone to react, she already disappeared.
"So, what now?" Asked Emir.
"I heard people can still hear you when they are in a coma so maybe try talking to him for now?"
While Emir and Zoel were trying to wake the young version of Leonard up, Morana had a completely different but very simple plan.
After disappearing from the duo's sight, she teleported to a different part of the caves.
Right away the first thing that caught her eye were massive, dark, shadowy figures floating all around the place.
They had no faces. As if made out of a black mist that took a large humanoid figure with only a big mouth.
They were screaming or more like screeching all the time as if communicating with each other.
And they were floating in circles as if doing some kind of strange, ghosty ritual dance.
Morana's appearance got their attention right away and they all turned towards her in a creepy synced motion and screeched very loudly at the same time.
"Hey, how are you all doing? Sorry for interrupting your Sunday ghost cult gathering, but I am really in a hurry so I would appreciate it if you just stop torturing the boy and let him out of the nightmare."
After finishing her words Morana naturally didn't forget her signature friendly smile. Right after she finished speaking the ghost cult simultaneously screeched at her once again, only this time it was way louder and even reached where Emir and Zoel were and they immediately became vigilant.
Not knowing the situation she has caused, Morana didn't even flinch in the sight of their hostility and smiled even brighter.
"Oh come on. I am not asking you to do something for free, there are some benefits in it for all of you." After saying this, Morana's bright smile became full of mischief.
This time the ghost cult simultaneously tilted their heads to the right in a puzzled manner.
One has to admit they did kinda look cute in a weird way.
***
Don't forget to leave many-many comments.
Also, follow me on Insta I post some sneak peeks there before uploading the chapters as well as some cations and character designs.@lazy-wanderer666
Don't forget to check out my second book "Spider lily."
>.<