Chapter Text
It was a chilling morning when Freya awoke in her small cottage in need of some water. She scoffed at the time seeing it was 5 in the morning, realizing she was most likely not going back to bed she decided to get a head start on her day. She did her usual chores of cleaning up the house and preparing breakfast for her father. She knew if she didn’t have everything perfect for him when he awoke then she would be on the bad end of his anger. Last time she made a mistake he punched her in the stomach for not having his steak well done. She knows that it could have been a lot worse but for some reason he was merciful that day which was a surprise to her, still the pain and having the air knocked out of her was a reminder that his version of mercy was not a good thing. she shudders at the thought of the potential pain and brushed it aside.
Realizing she needed a fruit for breakfast she saw they were out of oranges and needed to run to the market, but it wasn’t going to be open for another hour or so and there was a good chance her father was going to wake up soon. Her cottage was on the outskirts of her village and took about forty-five minutes to get there which would be perfect except for one very dangerous thing, it was still dark out. The village she lived in has an unnatural curse where at night the village is plagued with monsters known as lycans. These beasts are blood thirsty men who have lost all sense of their humanity and have an animalistic and savage nature. They reside in the many mountains and caves surrounding the village in Romania. They have the it completely surrounded and no one has ever escaped to which you may be thinking why not run in the daytime as to avoid them which is very smart, however no one has ever been able to escape as their bodies are somehow always returned in pieces. Even if you do somehow manage to escape its freezing outside at all times and is the only village for hundreds of miles. If that wasn’t enough there's always Castle Dimitrescu looming in the distance. the castle had been there for hundreds of years and was home to House Dimitrescu, any who ventured there never returned. It was a deathtrap and no one knew what loomed there.
Still needing fruit Freya snapped back to reality and weighed her options, either go out and hopefully the lycans will be returning to their caves or stay home and face the wrath of her father for not having breakfast ready. She decided to go with the first option and hope that luck would be on her side, it usually was in these situations as she had done this once before but only because the lycans were busy killing some of the men that had stayed at the tavern for too long. “good riddance” she thought to herself. The men in the village were in some ways worse than the lycans, they were bullies and not known for being the nicest to the women of the village. All the lycans wanted was to kill you, they were predictable whereas the men were not.
As she set out for the market Freya noticed it was exceptionally colder than previous nights but pushed on as dawn was approaching in a half hour and needed to get to the market. She passed by the old worn-down houses that had been abandoned or broken into by the lycans. There weren't many inhabited houses left on the outskirts but those that stayed are living on borrowed time including Freya and her father. Freya's mother had been taken one night when she was a child. Her and her mother had been walking around at night when a lycan came out of nowhere and cornered the two of them near a shack. Freya's mother realized they were both going to die so she told her daughter to run as fast as she could back home and hide, she gave her, her pendant and told her that it would always protect her even in the darkest of times. She pushed Freya forward and distracted the beast long enough for her to get away. She dared not look behind her for she feared she would see what she was hearing and watch her mother get ripped apart and slaughtered like an animal. Now at 23 years old she clutched her mother's amber pendant and kept walking along the path when all of a sudden, she heard a howl and her worst fears had been realized, she was not alone.
Looking around her Freya was desperately trying to find a place to hide and found refuge in an outhouse near a destroyed building. Her breath was heavy and realized she needed to cover her mouth, she had no idea how close the lycan was, but it was better to be safe than sorry. Trying to see out of the little hole in the door all she could see was the dark and snow and a lit torch on the well near her outhouse around her when suddenly she saw a body hit the floor. The body had been mangled and was missing an arm and had his or her throat ripped out to the point where the person was nearly decapitated. She couldn’t tell whether they were male or female as the body was so mangled and covered in blood that it was impossible. All she knew was that they suffered and must have been in a tremendous amount of pain, and that’s when the villager's killer was revealed.
The lycan jumped off the nearby roof of a building and was eating chunks of flesh from the dead villager. His eyes were black as night and his fangs were sharp and pearly white despite the crimson blood staining them. He was very humanlike and also very burly and muscular, his feet had long sharp nails almost as dangerous as his hands but not quite. His claws were stained with blood and had pieces of flesh and clothing still attached to them. Lost in the creatures' movements she didn’t realize that another lycan had appeared and was incredibly close to her. She heard heavy breathing that did not match her own and was too close to be the first monster and realized that she was in the presence of another lycan. Covering her mouth, she tried desperately to not be heard as the Lycans have excellent smell and hearing, but the beasts had been made aware of someone or something as they both started to look around and smell for whoever was near, they seemed agitated as if something was setting them off or making them unsettled.
Freya could only hold onto her mother's pendant and be as still as possible hoping the saving grace of sunlight would save her soon, but that grace was quickly ripped away as Freya accidently shifted her weight making a sound that instantly alerted the two beasts. There was a moment of silence that seemed to last forever as the monsters slowly moved toward the noise. The crunching of the snow underneath their feet kept getting louder as it drew closer. Freya knew her time had come and that this was how she would meet her end. At that moment the door was ripped open and the first lycan ripped Freya out of her hiding spot and threw her with incredible force against the nearby well. The air being knocked out of her remined Freya of her father. Trying to regain her composure she tried to get up and run but the beasts were unbelievably fast and were on her in an instant. Their breath could be seen in the cold night and their eyes were full of animalistic hunger, they roared in her face and the heat from their breath was enough to melt the snow around her.
She picked up a nearby rock and was ready to defend herself or at least go down fighting, then she felt it. A claw ripped into her side and the searing pain felt like someone had set her insides on fire. Freya screamed in agonizing pain as another lycan bit down into her right shoulder making her almost pass out from the pain. She hoped for a quick death, she wanted to be with her mother again and leave this awful world she lived in and be at peace. There was nothing else for her here, she didn't have friends and her father was an abusive man who hated her almost as much as himself. As she waited for death to come, she was suddenly relieved of the claws inside her and could barely make out a figure in the distance on the roof where the first lycan was perched before. Both lycans had turned around to face this mysterious hooded person as this must've been what agitated them earlier, and in that moment, all faded to black as Freya slipped into unconsciousness.