I wake because I couldn't breathe.
Not all at once. It was slow, as if the room itself has grown heavy and settled over me. My eyes open to darkness, but my body refuses to move. Every muscle answers with silence. My lungs fight for air that won't come.
Then I hear it.
A woman's breath.
Not beside my bed, but directly above me.
My eyes strain upward, and at first I see only a darker shape within the darkness. Then it leans closer. Tangled black hair hangs over a face that seems too pale to belong to the living. Her eyes reflect no light, yet somehow I can still see them fixed on mine. She smiles without warmth.
The Mara.
She seeks the exhausted, the grieving, and those whose spirits had already begun to fracture. She does not kill quickly. She prefers to visit night after night, sitting upon a sleeper's chest until each breath becomes harder than the last. Every nightmare she plants feeds her, stealing a little more strength, a little more hope, a little more of the soul.
Her weight settles over my ribs until they groan beneath her. I feel every heartbeat hammering against the prison of my own chest, growing weaker with each desperate attempt to inhale. She lowers her face until I can smell damp earth and ancient pine, like a burial mound opened after centuries.
Then the dreams began.
I watch myself wander through endless forests where the trees whisper in voices I recognize. Every person I have ever failed calling my name from behind the trunks, but each time I turn, they are gone. Ravens circle overhead, never landing, their cries echo like funeral bells. Somewhere deeper in the woods, wolves howl—not hunting flesh, but something far more precious.
Me.
When I finally tear myself awake, the room is empty.
The bruises across my chest are shaped like long, bony fingers.
The visits continue. Every morning I wake more exhausted than the night before. Food has no taste. Mirrors reflect a face that seems older by years. Friends say I look hollow, as though something inside me has been scraped away.
Most never remember seeing her.
The Mara does not simply bring nightmares. She follows the scent of fear until she finds a soul worn thin enough to harvest. If she captures your spirit before dawn, your body may continue living for years while something essential never returns.
I press an iron knife into my hands and scatter juniper across my doorway. I carve protective runes into the bedframe and speak old prayers to keep wandering spirits away.
I slept. For exactly one hour.
The weight returns.
She is angry.
Shadows stretch across the walls like grasping roots. Her hair floats as though underwater, and beneath her smile I catch a glimpse of teeth far too sharp for any human mouth.
She leans close enough for her lips to brush my ear.
"You cannot bar every door."
The knife lay twisted beside the bed, bent nearly in half.
The runes split the wood where they had been carved. In the frost covering my bedroom window, someone has traced a single word from the inside.
Tonight.
I have learned not to fear the darkness.
I fear sleep.
Every morning I wake just a little less certain that it is truly me who opens my eyes.