Katerina ran, she ran as fast as she could through the breaking twigs and the trembling reeds beneath her feet, to her home in the distance, she could see the outline of her home, she had to get there. She had to get there now or she'd lose it all.
She only had moments and it would all come to a close. She didn't' know what would happen, why, how it would impact her, all she knew is she had to stop it…or everything she knew would be lost and forgotten. It was hard to breath, there was as stitch in her chest and home had never felt so far even though it was there in the visible distance.
She burst through the front door, seemingly not quick enough, and the sight that hit her, the smell, even the taste, knocked the ground from beneath her. Her knees buckled in a cold sweat as she dropped to the floor, taking in the dead bodies strewn about the room. The tears hit the floor before she felt them, raw, and petrified in anguish, blood stains marred the delicate cleaning her mother had always taken such precocious time with. All she could see was the massacre Niklaus had left behind. What he'd left behind for her.
Her mother's agape, glassy-eyed face lay beside her, and she grasped the cold dead hand, closing her eyes gently in a quiet apology for the mistakes she made, for being banished, for being a disgrace. Katerina Petrova had destroyed her family, and this was the final ballad.
She wasn't sure how long she sat crying, broken, feeble-minded and feeble-bodied, she was hunched and sobbing, and then she was screaming, all she could see was blood, the metallic delicious and haunting ruby, it filled her up, it turned her eyes black, it was death incarnate, seeping into the air around her, and she couldn't stop screaming, her hands wringing her previously perfected chestnut curls.
She was jolted awake from her place in bed, her face wet as she touched the heat emanating from her eyes. Her worst nightmare, wasn't a dream at all…it was a memory.