A peculiar sound broke the silence of the cave. By all means it should have been the sound of rock grinding against rock, but no. A slow, rhythmic sound of something untangling, like a piece of clothing being pulled at an open seam. A crack here, accompanied by silence. A crack there, followed by miniature rips in the surface.

This phenomenon is something that should have never happened. For eons the silence of the cave had been undisturbed. No animals, no fluttering of leaves, no whistling of the wind. No life. The only movement the cave ever saw was the moon peering through a tiny crevice of the roof, leading to the outside world, way, way above.

The noise in the cave kept creating low rumbles, and after an indefinite amount of time, a piece of the wall had an indent, covered in cobweb like ripples, like something had impacted the wall and shattered the rock. Slowly but surely, all the strain on the wall shattered a piece of it, but it was not a wall.

It was a coffin. 

Inside the coffin lay a sleeping woman. A beauty who can rival the gods, the sun, the moon. Her silky ravenblack hair trailing and draping across her body as it falls down to her ankles. The red and silver streaks, creating a trinity of colours. Like a canvas of black, given life to the fluttering strands of it’s accompanying colours, playing, showing different sides of what would otherwise be a boring, uninteresting black.

The woman lay there nearly motionless, her assumed death only betrayed by a slow, rhythmic thump of her heart beating, echoing through the now unsealed coffin, reverberating through the rock and stone of the cave.

As though her body is waking up from an endless slumber, the rhythmic beating of her heart is then followed by the slow heaving of her chest, as her lungs take in the air in the cave.

The single ray of moonlight dancing in front of her face. In annoyance her hand rises to her face to block the ray that’s disturbing her sleep. Her eyes flutter open as she winces at the moonlight. 

Heterochromatic eyes, still glazed over with drowsiness, are staring into the darkness of the cave. The light dancing across her red eye, the same colour highlighting her hair, as a golden eye undisturbed by the moonlight, takes on a faint glow, peering into the abyss in front of her.

Her mind in a weird state of waking up, and trying to remember where she is, or more importantly, who she is. Where panic should fill her mind at the absurdity of waking up in a stone coffin, in a dark cave, she is calm. While her mind is racing with questions, confusion, and a plethora of emotions, panic is not one of them.

Taking a few seconds to survey her surroundings, the main thing on her mind is how well she can see without any visible lightsource. The single ray of moonlight only lit up a tiny area where her head used to rest. Following the ray, her eyes land on her bed, her coffin. 

‘Why did I wake up here, in a coffin? More importantly, who am I?’ Unsure of her identity, she looks around with a more inquisitive gaze, trying to find any clue, any small detail as to where she is, or who she is.

Her eyes land on a barely visible glow at the end of the room, she estimates it’s around 50 meters from where she’s standing, to where the glow is. Her gaze flickers across the room as she slowly makes her way towards the glowing part of the room. Mind still racing with a multitude of questions, that only seem to keep growing by the minute.

‘How long have I been asleep? How did I end up here? Why can’t I remember?’ Walking in a daze, she arrives at her destination, not even realizing that her attention was pulled from reality for dozens of seconds. Thinking she should be a bit more attentive, until she at least can get out of this cave, room?

Staring at the wall, she can see inscriptions, symbols, faintly glowing creating an archway. Two lines with about a meter and a half space between them, gently arching at the top to connect, intertwine.

She inspects the symbols, sigils, only for a pang of, something, to hit her brain. Pain? Electricity? She couldn’t tell, only that her head felt aflame as her vision faded, only for it to be gone as quickly as it came, leaving her with a few questions answered, but giving rise to many more.

The woman recognized the sigils, runes. They were runes. A certain language created to give form to enchantments, to magic. For some reason or another, she could understand these runes, as they told her a story, their story. Woven together like a beautiful piece of poetry, the words creating their own image. A girl locked in a room, slated for eternal slumber, only for something, or someone to wake her up.

She couldn’t tell why the runes told her this, but this particular enchantment was not to keep her in, but to keep others out, giving her a safe haven during her sleep. Lightly dragging her fingers across a few of the runes, leaving a glowing trail of gold behind, as the runes morph into others.

A low rumble verberates through the room, as the archway in front of her recedes into the wall, only to slowly be lifted up and out of her way, revealing a tunnel. The tunnel had about the same dimensions as the archway. Tall enough to stretch her hands and not hit the ceiling, but not wide enough to do the same.

Taking one last look at what has been her bedchamber for who knows how long, as she doesn’t even know her age, she leaves it behind and ventures into the tunnel. Questions still spinning around her head, but she knows one thing, her name.

‘Oriana.’