Darkness is the only 'Home' I know

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02:00 a.m., June.

They say night is the time for you to sleep, night is dangerous, night holds many secrets, night is dark, and night is the time for monsters to lurk around. Apparently all those things weren't stopping me from running through the darkness called night.

With the light emitted from fire and the sound of people shouting right behind you was enough to make me fasten my pace, the thought of being captured by your chaser was never a pleasant thing. Further imagining of what will they do to me once I got caught had me forgotten the dread of being alone in the open landscape right past midnight.

The towns looked so small from the uphill which indicates how far and long have I've been running from there. Soon the silhouette of trees in front caught my attention. I'm sure it's the forest; one that people here always reminded to stay away from. And they even called it Dark Forest, cliché name but I understand why.

Standing in front of the trees, I started to doubt my idea. Running in the forest at night was never a really safe plan at all. There could be anything in there and considering its dark I am totally in disadvantage. But rather than being caught by those garbage, encountering a vampire or a wild beast doesn't sound so bad, well, literally I am being chased by supernatural beings. I closed my eyes then took a deep breath and let it out. There's no other choice, run or die. I opened my eyes and without hesitation, I ran into the forest.

With the dim moonlight as the only source of light I ran as fast as I could, following the trail of the forest, big and tall trees surrounding me in the veil of thin mist and eerie coldness. At least I could use the trees to hide for a moment was what I thought when I heard their voices.

"She ran into the forest!! Quickly!!" the troop clearly indicated that they were not afraid of the dark forest or anything at all for their goal is just one, to catch their prey.

'. They're already this close to me?!'

I didn't know how long I've been running but I realized the trail was gone and a new landscape of the forest greeted me. No more big trees to hide this time, only tall trees with no branches that can be hold to climb with. The trees weren't even in the same lining so there's no use to hide behind them. I could saw almost clearly around me for there's nothing much that can preventing the moonlight to spread its light. Even the forest's floor now was covered by dead leaves and roots of the tree that appeared on the earth surface, as if holding me back from running away. I could hear the sound of horses weighing not far behind.

'No! Run!! Don't let them catch you Kyla! You must run no matter what!'

Fearing for my life, I keep running as hard as I could until I saw a very big oak tree not far from me and decided to stop. For my breath already reached its limit.

"Hah... hah... hah... I-I think I lost them." I held the tree, trying to steady my breath. Staying calm in this kind of situation was impossible for me now. But still, it won't kill me trying to wreck my brain to found a new plan.

"There she is!!"

I snapped my head at the voice and in an instant continue running into the deep forest. I could hear the horses' hoops more clearly now and panic starting to attack me again. I frantically am running without paying attention. My sight became blurry and it felt painful to take breath through the mouth due to the lack of oxygen. Panting and drenched in cold sweat, I couldn't even feel my legs anymore.

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But before she could ran any further, a vine wrapped one of her feet. "Aahh!!" She fell on the ground pretty bad and couldn't move for a moment due to the impact.

"We got her!!" A man said and followed by the cheers from the troops.

"Ughh..." she groaned, slowly sitting up and realized she was caught by her chasers.

"N-no. No!!" she grabs the vine to free her leg, only wanting to run again. But her effort was futile. More vines wrapped around her, this time it wrapped her legs and hands. She looked up at the man in a black cloak with face full of scar marks already standing in front of her.

"Let me go!!"

Ignoring her words, he picked her up and brought her to the horse he rides.

"HELP!! SOMEBODY HELP ME!!" She managed to scream before the man quickly wrapped another vine on .

"Shut up! Before I