Awakened by Spirits: CHAPTER 1
Read the Prologue first.
As she sprinted blindly through the streets, one thing was clear—she couldn’t stop. Lane had hoped her trip to Caragain would offer a fresh start, but instead, it seemed it would end up killing her faster than Stanlow’s harsh winter ever could. And it was all thanks to Shadow Crawlers.
At first Caragain was exactly what she’d been looking for. A big city filled with possibilities where her dream could become reality: a life without worries, judgement, and Shadow Crawlers. Though never a possibility in her mind, the latest was true in this city. Or so she thought.
After travelling from Stanlow for fourteen days through thick forests, she arrived in the city exhausted and hungry. Its broad streets with vibrant buildings towering over her, their facades, each a different colour from the neighbouring homes, all led her to a packed central square filled with tents, merchants, and buyers.
She’d never seen a place as beautiful. Granted, she’d never seen much of anything at all. Her life from age three had been spent in the orphanage of a town up north named Stanlow, where every structure was built of wood, a story high, and on the brink of falling apart. Its climate was harsh and cold, but here, it was warm and mild—never too extreme. The soft breeze at the beginning of spring coaxed the dormant plants out of their winter slumber. Never in all her years had she seen the first sprouts break through the ground this early in the year, just days after the first full moon of the season. In Stanlow, that would only start halfway through spring's third and last moon cycle.
At the central square, she was hypnotised by the tents selling everything from spices to clothes to fresh produce and even a variety of stews that filled the air with earthy scents. Her stomach growled.
The city’s colours, the smells in the air and the number of people gathered in the square were mesmerising. It buzzed with so much life she missed the sun going down. In Stanlow, doors and windows would have been shut long before twilight, with only the moon and stars illuminating the streets. But here… It was as if the stars had been plucked from the sky and hung on strings, casting a shimmer onto everything around them.
When she came back to reality, night had already fallen. In the middle of a busy square, she tensed. Shadow Crawlers could come at any minute, and her attempts to live an ordinary life would die with them. Eyes darting everywhere, ears open to any unusual sounds, she rushed out of the central square in search of a quiet area. With no money to rent a room, she would have to make do with a place on the streets.
Hours later she arrived at an alley in the back of a bakery, its walls still warm from the ovens. Surprisingly, not a single Shadow Crawler crossed her path. At first she thought it was luck, but after searching for five days, she dared to relax.
Are there really no Shadow Crawlers here? Is that even possible?
Now, looking back, she hadn’t found paradise, hope had simply clouded her judgment.
On those blissfully naïve days, she caught up on her sleep, filling her stomach with bread tossed away in the bakery bins. Somewhat sure Shadow Crawlers wouldn’t show up out of nowhere and freshened up from a bath in the pond nearby, she felt comfortable asking the baker for a job—any job. With her history of being shut off by the Stanlow villagers, she was surprised the owner told her she could clean the floors before opening and after closing in exchange for the day’s leftovers and a few coins.
She immediately accepted.
Wanting to save up money, she tried surviving with only the leftovers and the occasional piece of fruit her employer gave her. Not a day passed before her growling stomach made her sprint to the butcher next door. After buying all the beef jerky she could, the owner offered her the same deal as the baker.
With a full stomach and a place to sleep, she felt her life developing in the right direction. If Miss Deleon, the orphanage’s headmistress, were here, she would be proud of how much she had accomplished in such a short time.
The food from both her employers was enough to fill her up, so she saved every coin she earned. Although springs were mild, she had no idea what to expect of winters. Saving for future emergencies was only wise. It couldn’t be as harsh as in Stanlow, but she wouldn’t take a chance. The only thing she deemed worth the money was a black leather jacket to help her through the chilly nights. She would only spend the rest after surviving the first winter. Only then would she know how to spend it appropriately.
Content with her life, she developed a nice routine, starting with a morning shift preparing the bakery and butchery for opening, followed by a run in the park nearby to stay fit. Halfway through, she often stopped at a more secluded area and practised with her knives—a small one she had stolen from Miss Deleon’s kitchen in her jeans’ back pocket, and three made from sharp rocks in her backpack.
Even without seeing a single Shadow Crawler, she dared not relax fully. Without much going on, incorporating her usual Stanlow training into her routine wasn’t hard. If anything, it made her feel more connected to Miss Deleon.
When she finished her run, she always took a shower—if you could call it that—in the park’s public bathroom sink. If necessary, she cleaned her clothes in the same sink and hung them on a wire she’d tied between the bakery’s alley walls.
On days she had time, she wandered a new part of the city or went to the market to chat with the locals until her closing shifts. Her bosses often stayed late, entertaining her with stories about their customers while she cleaned. It was funny to hear about what bothered them and what they found rude and entitled.
Most of the time, their stories were about people already having a lousy day letting their anger out on a slice of meat that had supposedly been cut wrong, having to wait too long, or being handed the wrong bread, which had been precisely what they’d asked for but for some reason, the baker should have known they meant the other loaf with a completely different name.
Even here, where everything looked perfect to her, people were angry and took out on others for things beyond their control. It was no different than what she’d endured in Stanlow, but luckily, she didn’t have to deal with it anymore.
Her routine ended with a last short walk around the block before tucking herself in the cardboard bed she had behind the bakery’s garbage bin.
Typically, she fell asleep to the sounds of the leaves rustling with the wind, the water from the canal tapping against its walls, and the occasional person rushing home from a late shift or a party that had dragged on for too long. But on one of the colder evenings since her arrival twenty-eight days ago, none of those sounds comforted her to sleep. Instead, the world around her was too silent. It was unnatural.
She walked around the block, searching for anything unusual to confirm her suspicions. Part of her begged her to leave when it sensed something terrible was coming. She didn’t know what, but her gut rumbled in defiance, warning her to enjoy the peace while it lasted.
Unfortunately, the following night, she understood what it meant. Four Shadow Crawlers attacked her. Not separately, but at once, which was strange. Even in Stanlow, no matter the circumstances, when she left the orphanage, she was attacked. Only her, and never anyone else. But just like she’d never encountered one in Caragain before, she’d never seen them fight in groups. In Stanlow, they always came alone.
As adrenaline coursed through her veins, she couldn’t help but smile. Her years of training had paid off. Within minutes, they were gone, and she was unhurt. At least four years had passed since a Shadow Crawler had last bitten or scratched her. With a job where she was expected to look decent, she needed to keep the streak going.
The night after, ten came after her. On high alert, she responded immediately. Since the Shadow Crawlers couldn’t swim, she ran into the pond in the park near the bakery to separate them, thinking it would be easier to take them out that way. But she’d been wrong. After throwing a few pebbles and having them dodging it with ease, she stopped. It made too much noise, and the last thing she wanted was to bring anyone’s attention to herself.
Enticing them to jump at her didn’t work either, so she resorted to running. The trees in the park would make it easier to split them into smaller groups and would provide coverage. When she turned to face them at the edge of the park, three Shadow Crawlers lunged at her.
“Suckers!” she cackled, dodging the attack and sprinting away. The creatures hit a tree. Knowing they were too dumb to learn from their failures, she did it again, and two others fell for it. “I can do this all day, boys!”
The remaining five bolted at her, three jumping for her chest. She spun out of the way a second before the impact and dashed towards the two that had stayed behind. They attacked her, but she sliced them in two before their teeth reached her.
Without skipping a beat, she turned around, stabbing each of the three Shadow Crawlers lunging at her in quick succession.
When the five who had stayed behind after hitting a tree caught up to her, she tried the trick again. “Idiots!” she yelled, seeing two taking the bait. But there was no time to gloat. From the corner of her eye, she sensed movement. Two Shadow Crawlers jumped, one towards each side of the tree. With no time to alter her trajectory, she leaned backwards to evade the attack, almost losing her balance. The fifth Shadow Crawler seized its opportunity, lashing at her and sinking its teeth into her leg.
She screamed in pain. “Enough!” Her hand tightened around the handle of her knife, the ashes of the five remaining creatures gone before touching the ground.
With her face still red from all the running and slicing, she limped to the public bathroom in the park and cleaned her wound the best she could. In the alley behind the bakery, she grabbed the emergency kit she’d gotten from Miss Deleon and spread lotion on her wounds. After wrapping it with gauze, she tried to sleep but was unsuccessful before her morning shift came around. An unsettling tightness in her stomach told her things would worsen before improving.
The wound felt less and less painful throughout the day, but the gut feeling persisted. Trying to get her mind off it, she went to the market, on a long walk through the city, and even cleaned the bakery’s floors twice on her late shift. Time still passed by painfully slow.
When the streets fell silent, she waited, a tight knot in her throat. During the day, a thousand scenarios had played out in her mind, but never in her wildest dreams would she have guessed right.
A swarm of at least fifty Shadow Crawlers sprinted towards her. Probably more.
No, definitely more.
Other creatures she had never seen were in the mixture, but getting a closer look wasn’t an option. She had to run. Ten had been challenging. Surviving a herd that big was practically impossible. Running was the only alternative. She didn’t know where to go, only that she couldn’t stop.
Luckily, she’d walked through most of the city and knew how the streets in the ten-kilometre radius around the bakery were connected. Winning in the middle of these streets wasn’t possible. She needed a plan. Fast.
Running straight wouldn’t work for long. The number of Shadow Crawlers and the full moon worked in her favour. The creatures kept to the shadows as much as possible to avoid the moon’s light, but their numbers caused them to push each other out of the way, slowing the pack down.
But where could she go? To a park? Or the central square? It had open spaces, which was handy to split the herd into smaller groups.
“No… Too many people,” she thought. Where else?
Shuutin.
“The Shuutin forest! Of course!”
Adjusting her trajectory, she sprinted with a purpose. The forest was about six kilometres away from where she was. It would be tough to fight afterwards, but it was the best solution she could come up with. With all the trees, the Shadow Crawlers wouldn’t reach her all at once. And if she were lucky, there would be a pond or a lake she could get into until the sun came out. “Try and catch me in the water, suckers!” she shouted at the Shadow Crawlers following her.
If she could reach it, she would be fine. So, she raced until the treeline came into view.
Run faster. Faster!
She couldn’t quite understand why the need to go faster came over her, but she resisted. If she pushed herself too hard, she’d be too exhausted to fight the creatures once inside the forest.
Faster!
The urge grew stronger, becoming almost painful. It had warned her about the Shadow Crawlers coming, perhaps it was right about this too.
Almost at the forest’s edge, clouds covered the moon. A few creatures broke away from the pack, slithering towards her at lightning speed. One lashed at her leg, barely missing it. Two others leapt right after. Lane dodged one, but the other bit her right shoulder. She screamed as pain shot through her.
A few more steps and she’d be in the forest. Pushing herself to keep going, a wave of dizziness hit her, slowing her pace.
She stopped.
“Run! What are you doing? Run!” a male voice screamed.
She fell, crossing the edge of the forest.
Who was that? was her last thought before her vision blurred into darkness.