Felicia: Clawing Through Darkness by Jade Gretz

https://www.deviantart.com/jadegretzai/art/Felicia-Clawing-Through-Darkness-1242732020

Felicia: Clawing Through Darkness ANIMATION

The Clock in the Crimson Gallery

Felicia had always assumed that abandoned vampire mansions were supposed to be quiet.

This one disagreed.

Wind slithered through cracked stained-glass windows like a phantom pianist tapping discordant notes. A crimson chandelier—thick with dust, heavy with forgotten centuries—creaked overhead, as if awakening to watch the intruder padding softly across the marble floor.

Her tail flicked. Her ears twitched.

Felicia whispered to herself, “Okay… so the Sisters of Mercy Orphanage never mentioned field trips like this.”

Even in the dimness, she glowed—soft fur catching the lantern’s flame in blue-white shimmer, eyes bright with optimism she refused to abandon even when crossing the threshold of a vampire’s lair. She had come on rumor alone: time warps, vanishing travelers, an ancient creature nesting beneath the old estate.

And more importantly—someone crying for help.

Not audibly. Not physically.

But she felt it—a rippling through time, a beckoning tremor at the edges of her senses.

She’d never been good at ignoring someone who needed saving.

“Alright, spooky mansion,” Felicia murmured. “Show me your worst.”

The echo answered.

Not hers.

Something upstairs laughed—a low, warped chuckle that sounded as though its owner had lived through five different eras and lost its voice in each one.

Felicia bared her claws. “Cute. Real welcoming.”

She stepped deeper into the foyer. Dust curled beneath her paws. Portraits lined the walls—stern vampire nobles staring down with eyes painted so realistically they seemed ready to blink. Her lantern cast ripples over each face, elongating shadows, stretching their smiles unnaturally wide.

One portrait tugged at her attention: a woman with obsidian curls, a gown of black silk, and a smile that suggested she knew every secret this mansion swallowed.

Felicia blinked. The woman's eyes were following her.

Felicia turned away, heart thumping. “Nope. Nope. Nope. Not today.”

The staircase ahead split into twin arms. She ascended the left, steps groaning beneath her. At the top, a hallway stretched long as an abandoned railway, carpet eaten by moths, doors left ajar like broken teeth.

Halfway down, a grandfather clock ticked.

Wrongly.

The pendulum swung in reverse.

Tick-tock.

Tock-tick.

Tick… tick… tick…

Then silence.

Felicia approached cautiously. “You’re supposed to keep time, not take it for a walk backwards.”

The clock trembled.

Then split.

The wood cracked open like a chrysalis, but instead of a butterfly, a shadow spilled out—oozing across the carpet, stretching long fingers of darkness that scraped against her feet.

Felicia leapt back, claws flashing.

The shadow swelled, bones knitting, fur sprouting—a hulking chimera of wolf, reptile, and something older than either. Its spine arched wrong, bent wrong, as though time had snapped it and fused the pieces back together without reading the instructions.

Its eyes glowed three different colors.

And its voice came in layers.

Three versions of the same creature speaking slightly out of sync:

“Daaancer… from an age that isn’t here yet…”
“Your heartbeat doesn’t belong…”
“Give it… to us…”

Felicia steadied herself. “I don’t give my heart away on the first date. Especially not to three of you sharing one body. I mean—get a calendar.”

The creature lunged.

Felicia dodged with dancer’s grace, flipping backward onto her feet. “Woah! No personal space? Really?”

It struck again. She swiped its face. Her claws met something like flesh, something like fog—she wasn’t sure.

It screamed in three voices, each at a slightly different pitch.

Felicia shuddered. “Okay. That’s new. But I’ve fought weirder. Probably.”

The chimera charged through a wall, tearing an archway into the next room. Felicia sprinted after it—landing inside the mansion’s Crimson Gallery.

This room was wrong.
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