Chapter1
The Girl in the Mist
Theme: Isolation
It was nothing new for the streets of Velmira to be cloaked in mist, but tonight, it felt sentient. It coiled through alleyways like a living thing, clinging to windows, slipping beneath doorways, swallowing the flicker of lanterns with greedy hunger. The moon hung high looking red, bloody and swollen like a wound in the sky. In Velmira, they called it the Hunter’s Moon. No one said why. Not anymore.
Elara Voss walked alone, her boots tapping against the damp cobblestones. She kept to the shadows, the fraying hood of her coat low over her brow. Her coat was too thin for the chill. Her breath clouded the air in puffs that vanished too quickly, as if the fog also feeds on warmth.
She turned down a narrow passage between a shuttered bakery and a crooked bookstore with warped windows. The shortcut was familiar. Safer. Supposedly. Her fingers curled tighter around the strap of her worn satchel. She could still smell cinnamon rolls in her memory, warm, sticky, sweet. Her mother used to buy them after morning prayers. Before the fire. Before the wolves.
A hiss of wind swept through the alley, and something shifted in the mist. Elara’s heartbeat quickened.
Then a voice. “Elara!”
She spun, nearly tripping over her own feet. Her eyes searched the thick fog. A boy emerged scrawny, short, with wind-tangled hair and ink-stained fingers. Joran.
"You scared me," she snapped.
He held up a stack of crumpled prayer scrolls. “Didn’t mean to. You shouldn’t be out tonight.”
She gave a tired shrug. “I would say the same to you.”
“I’m not marked.” That word again.
“Neither am I,” she said too quickly.
He gave her a strange look. Not disbelief. Something worse, pity. “Sure,” he said, but didn’t linger. “Stay out of the fog.”
She watched him vanish into the mist, his words echoing longer than they should have.
The orphanage loomed like a mausoleum — cold stone, arched windows, iron gate. The building used to be a chapel. Now it was home to twelve children and three exhausted wardens. Elara had arrived here two winters ago after the fire that left her totally alone in the world.
No one asked how she survived.
And Elara never told them what she saw in the flames.
She slipped inside the orphanage quietly, the old gate making a creaking sound behind her. The hallway smelled of wax, mildew, and boiled cabbage. Miss Harrow, the night warden, sat dozing in a rocking chair, spectacles dangling from her nose. A tattered romance novel lay open in her lap. Elara padded past her and up the stairs.
She entered their shared room, three other girls slept in narrow beds, their faces turned to the walls. None spoke to her unless forced. She was the cursed girl. The girl with no family. The girl who woke up screaming.
Elara sat by the window. The fog pressed against the glass like a living shroud. She could see movement in it. Or maybe she imagined it.
She pressed a trembling hand to her chest. The pendant was gone. Her mother’s pendant — a silver crescent moon, lost the night of the fire. It had been the last thing she held onto.
Until she saw it again. Around a stranger’s neck, in her dreams.
The dreams returned with claws and smoke. She ran through flames. A shadow chased her neither man nor beast, with eyes like coals and teeth like razors. When it caught her, she screamed, and woke up.
The floor creaked, Not in the dream, In the room.
Elara’s breath hitched. She lay still, eyes wide, straining to hear.
Creak.
A step. Down the hall. Not heavy. Not a warden. Not a child either.
She slid from the bed, heart hammering. She reached down beneath her mattress and pulled out the heavy brass candleholder she kept hidden. Her fingers wrapped tightly around it.
Creak, Closer.
She edged into the hallway. The air was freezing. Fog had crept beneath the doors and pooled along the floor like spilled ink.
“Elara.” Her blood turned to ice, she knew that voice.
She hadn’t heard it in two years, “Mama?” she whispered.
The voice came again. “Elara, come.”
She ran. Past sleeping rooms, past the old chapel doors. Her breath came in ragged gasps. She stopped just short of the chapel.
The door was ajar, the fog inside glowed faintly red.
She pushed the door open, and froze.
A creature stood at the altar. Seven feet tall, gaunt and skeletal, draped in black tatters. Its face was long and pale, with hollow eyes that burned like dying stars. In one clawed hand, it held something small and silver.
Her mother’s pendant, “No,” she gasped. “Give it back.”
The creature turned its head slowly. “You remember,” it rasped. “Good.”
It took a step forward.
Elara backed away. She raised the candleholder, though her hands shook. “Stay back.”
The creature smiled. “You are ready.”
It lunged, and then CRASH.
A blur of motion shattered the stained-glass window. A massive black wolf slammed into the creature, knocking it back. The beast snarled, fangs flashing in the red moonlight. The creature hissed and clawed, and the two collided like titans.
Elara screamed. She tried to run, but pain seized her. Her spine arched. Her skin burned. Her knees hit the floor.
She was changing, bones cracked, muscles tore. Her scream twisted into a howl.
Then everything went dark.
She woke to cold and blood.
The chapel was wrecked. The pews shattered. The stained-glass window lay in shards. The creature was gone.
And beside her lay the black wolf bleeding.
No, not a wolf. A man now. Tall, dark-haired, golden-eyed. Blood stained his shirt. He looked at her with something like wonder or sorrow.
“You’re one of us,” he said. She tried to speak, but her throat felt raw.
The man stood. “Come with me. Or they’ll kill you.” “Who?” He didn’t answer.
Outside, the mist swirled. The pendant was still in her hand.
The door creaked open behind her, more footsteps, more wolves.
“Elara Voss,” a new voice boomed. “By decree of the Alpha Circle, you are summoned.”
The man’s eyes widened. “Run” he whispered. But it was too late.
Figures stepped out from the
shadows. Cloaked. Hooded. And not human.
Elara stood, blood-streaked, trembling.
Alone. Marked. Changed and hunted.
