Vestia rested on the ground, not moving for years on top of a mound of dust and her absurdly long silver mane, now lets as a wild and matted halo around her gaunt face. The cold, damp air of the forgotten dungeon clung to her skin like a shroud, as the weight of a thousand years of isolation pressed down upon her. Her once piercing crimson eyes, now milky and vacant behind the cursed blindfold, stared sightlessly into the gloom.
The silence was shattered by the distant echo of footsteps and the scrape of metal against stone. Vestia's ears, keen even after centuries of imprisonment, picked up the sounds of her impending visitor. A human, by the sound of it, and one with a purpose, judging by the determined stride.The footsteps grew louder, closer, until they stopped abruptly. Vestia could feel a presence before her, a warmth that cut through the chill of the dungeon.
“Are you here… to end me?”
She whispered, her voice hoarse from centuries of disuse. The human was close, perhaps reaching out to touch her. She tensed, a lifetime of fear and mistrust rising to the surface. She could hear the clink of tools, the scrape of metal on metal, and then the heavy clank of chains falling to the stone floor. With each link that broke, each restraint that fell away, Vestia felt a flicker of something she had long thought extinguished: hope
