Chapter 2 – The Mark of the Ring
388 Words
The ring was cold when she picked it up.
Moonlight glimmered faintly along the silver surface, and the symbol engraved upon it — a crescent cut through by a single line — felt strangely familiar.
Lara’s fingers trembled as she turned it. Inside, small notches had been carved by hand, circling the band:
“Born of blood, awakened beneath the moon.”
She didn’t understand it, but something in those words unsettled her, as if they had brushed against a memory she had forgotten how to recall.
By the time she reached home, the darkness of the forest had already clung to her clothes.
The village streets were empty — every window shuttered, every house swallowed by a heavy stillness.
On nights of the full moon, no one went outside. No one, except her.
The door creaked when she entered. The fire in the hearth had long gone out, and the air was cold, yet Lara didn’t light a flame.
She simply set the ring on the table and stared at it, as though waiting for an answer no one could give.
“Who are you…?” she whispered.
The night passed slowly, but her thoughts refused to rest — the man’s eyes, that voice, the way he had said: “The forest knows you.”
When the first light of dawn crept through the window, Lara had already made her decision.
She would go back.
In daylight, everything looked harmless — simple, safe.
Birds chirped, the village stirred to life again, as if the night had been nothing more than a bad dream.
But at the forest’s edge, near the roots of the trees, Lara saw them: deep, clean gouges in the soil, as though left by something heavy dragging itself across the earth.
She knelt, touched the ground. The marks were fresh.
Her stomach tightened, yet something in her drew closer.
Then she saw it — a small scrap of black cloth half-buried in the mud. The fabric was familiar. The same as the coat the man had worn.
The wind stirred the branches, and suddenly the birds fell silent.
Lara turned.
Nothing.
Yet she could feel it — the weight of unseen eyes on her back.
Somewhere deeper in the forest, the wolves howled again — but this time, the sound was nearer. Much nearer.
- Writer
