A chill, damp air still clung to the ancient stones of the Keep, a ghost of the storm that had ravaged the land mere days ago. Elara, hunched over a collection of drying nightshade berries in her temporary chambers, felt the knot in her stomach loosen fractionally. Master Thorne’s voice, usually a measured rumble, had been uncharacteristically breathless through the scrying orb, delivering news that was both a reprieve and a deepening mystery. Kaelen Vance, or rather, Kaelen Blackwood, had stirred. For a week, Thorne reported, he had walked among the living, lucid, albeit shrouded in an unnerving quietude. Then, as suddenly as he had roused, he’d succumbed again to ‘The Long Sleep,’ sinking into a slumber deeper than any before. Elara felt a profound, shameful gush of relief. Her fabrication, the desperate claim of being his wife, had bought her time. A respite from the volatile, memory-less man she feared, the man who held her fate in his unpredictably strong hands. Yet, a seed of unease began to sprout. The physician, old Master Thorne, gazed at the polished surface of his scrying orb, a frown creasing his brow. The Lady Elara’s rapid-fire thanks had sounded less like gratitude and more like… escape. Thorne tapped a gnarled finger against the obsidian. A patient, miraculously roused from a two-year comatose state, only to revert, deeper than ever. The resilience of the Blackwood bloodline was legendary, their bone-deep vitality aiding a swift physical recovery. But this new development… it defied all reason. He had spent the last two weeks observing Kaelen, now confined to the crumbling West Wing as per Lord Valerius’s curious insistence. The younger Blackwood had been a puzzle even in his brief lucidity, his eyes holding a haunted depth that belied his amnesia. Thorne had often found himself speaking to the sleeping man, probing the murky depths of his unconscious mind. “Can you hear me, my Lord?” he’d murmured hours ago, during one of his rounds. A slight tremor ran through Kaelen’s still form. Then, a whisper, barely audible, slurred and thick with sleep. “Se…ep…” Thorne leaned closer, a flicker of professional curiosity stirring. “Good, good. Say what comes to mind.” “Please… don’t wake.” The words had been repeated, a chilling litany, as Kaelen drifted in and out of a deeper haze. Thorne rubbed his chin, a prickle of unease spreading through him. Valerius’s insistence on keeping Kaelen isolated, despite the advanced facilities available to a House of Blackwood’s standing, felt increasingly strange. But Thorne’s loyalty, and his substantial retainer, precluded questioning the whims of his liege. “Ah,” Thorne exclaimed softly, his thoughts abruptly pulled from Kaelen to his conversation with Elara. He had forgotten to tell her. Forgotten to explain the true, terrifying nature of Kaelen’s condition. Not merely a deep sleep, but a magical affliction known in ancient texts as the ‘Somnus Primalis’ – The Primal Sleep. It was a rare, savage echo of the cataclysm, a disease of the deep mind that could manifest with alarming aberrations: insatiable hungers, violent outbursts, and a chilling regression to instinct. Still, it was only for tonight. Surely, nothing would happen tonight. --- Elara hummed a tuneless melody, the sound thin and reedy in the quiet of the Keep. Her brief exchange with Thorne had left a lingering anxiety, but the profound, almost dizzying relief that Kaelen was unconscious, not stalking the halls seeking answers, overshadowed it. She had survived the day. The brittle, artificial peace in the manor felt precarious, but for now, it was hers. She walked towards the servants’ entrance, a narrow passage leading to the kitchens and the small, overlooked courtyard where she often gathered medicinal herbs. A quick check of her supplies, then perhaps a calming draught of valerian root. Reaching the heavy oak door, usually secured with a robust iron bar, her breath caught. The wood was splintered inward, the iron warped and twisted like cold taffy. A raw, gaping wound in the ancient defenses of the Keep. Moonlight, thin and watery after the storm, cast long, twisting shadows that danced like specters in the gloom. Where had Kaelen gone? For nearly half an hour, Elara walked, not daring to call out his name. The thought of raising the alarm, of involving Lord Valerius, made her stomach clench. Her precarious position, built on a lie, would shatter. She ran a thumb over the polished surface of her small sending stone, a relic of an age when communication was simpler. Contacting Valerius was a last resort, an admission of failure she was unwilling to make. She ventured out into the estate grounds, the remnants of the storm making the paths treacherous. Old electric lanterns, powered by sputtering arcane sigils, cast pools of sickly yellow light along the crumbling walls. Her gaze scanned the damp earth. A strange mark, a broad, disturbed furrow, snaked across the path, leading away from the Keep towards the denser, untamed coppices that bordered the ancient forest. It was too wide for a man dragging his feet, too deliberate for a simple fall. A shiver traced its way down her spine. He truly was horrible, capable of such a thing. She thought of the legends of feral men, those touched by the lingering shadow of the cataclysm, driven to animalistic urges. Following the unsettling trail, Elara’s heart began to thrum an anxious rhythm. The scent of damp earth and crushed foliage mingled with something else—something metallic, something sharp and visceral. A fluttering sound, soft yet insistent, reached her ears from beyond a thicket of overgrown briar. Her breath hitched. She pushed through the thorns, ignoring the bite against her forearms. “Kaelen! Put that down!” she gasped, the words tearing from her throat unbidden. The sight before her froze her blood. Kaelen, not two dozen paces away, was hunched over a dark, indistinct mass. Moonlight, breaking through the clouds, illuminated his face. His eyes were blank, unfocused, glazed with a terrifying vacancy. His jaw muscles worked, tearing at something bloody and raw. A strangled, guttural sound escaped his throat, and he spat a fragment of bone and dark tissue onto the mossy ground. Elara almost vomited, a wave of bitter bile rising in her throat. The pheasant, a magnificent bird from the Keep’s aviaries, lay mangled, its neck brutally twisted, its plumage soaked crimson. Its eyes stared sightlessly at the sky. His lips, his chin, even his hands were smeared with blood. His gaze, dull and distant, drifted from the ravaged bird to her. He was oblivious, or perhaps, simply unconcerned by her presence. This was the Somnus Primalis, then. The ravenous hunger, the primitive aggression, the utter disconnect from reality. She forced herself to breathe, to quell the terror. Her mind, ever pragmatic, began to assess the threat. “It must be difficult for you to move, Kaelen,” she said, her voice strained but attempting a calm, reassuring tone. She was trying to gauge his mood, the depth of his regression, to find an angle to rein him in, to make him docile again. “Let’s go back. You shouldn’t be out here.” He dropped the pheasant carcass, the dull thud echoing in the sudden silence. His head tilted, a slow, unnatural motion, like a predator assessing prey. Moonlight seemed to cling to him, not illuminating, but emphasizing the shadows that clung to his form. He looked taller, broader than before. His clothes, once fine, now hung in dusty tatters, clinging to a lean, powerful frame that seemed to have sharpened, grown more defined in his sickness. A threadbare sleeve, caught by a sudden gust of wind, revealed a glimpse of sculpted muscle, taut and defined. He moved, a strange, half-crouching crawl, closer to her, his movements fluid and unsettlingly primal. Elara’s mind, reeling, conjured an image from a forgotten tome of natural history: the legendary Cinder-Serpent of the Ashlands, a creature said to drink the blood of its prey, its scales a riot of crimson and black. He stood before her, not the man she had briefly known, nor the invalid she had claimed. This was something else. Something older, wilder, soaked in the crimson aftermath of a meal. “Kaelen…” Her voice was a fragile whisper. “Name…” The word was a rasp, a guttural demand. “What?” Her blood ran cold. He hadn’t asked *who* she was. He had asked for her name. Her lie, her fabricated identity, hung between them like a brittle shard of ice. His eyes, no longer blank, held a chilling intensity. They pinned her, demanding. Her mind raced, desperate for an answer, for an escape, for a manipulation that could save her from the primal beast staring back. “What’s your name?” His voice, still rough, carried a predatory undertone. Her heart hammered against her ribs, a frantic drum in the silent, moonlit woods.

A Primal Awakening