PROLOGUE
404 Words
KAEL
For eighteen years, I have been a shadow.
I learned early that moving unseen was safer than being noticed. Questions led to walls, and walls led to silence. So I watched. I listened. I followed the faintest traces of magic wherever they appeared—only to find them gone the moment I reached them.
I searched for her.
The girl the prophecy speaks of.
The one the world pretends does not exist.
At first, she was nothing more than a name whispered through broken texts and half-burned records. A child hidden at birth. A presence powerful enough to inspire fear, yet small enough to be erased. The prophecy never said where to find her—only that when she stepped into the open, everything would change.
That knowledge has followed me longer than I care to admit.
So has she.
I cannot remember a time when she was not at the back of my mind. Even when years passed without a single trace of her, even when doubt crept in and whispered that the search was pointless, she remained—unseen, unreachable, inevitable.
My obsession.
Every time I drew too close, she vanished.
One moment, there would be signs—distorted magic, impossible echoes, places that felt watched. The next, nothing. Entire towns wiped clean of her presence as if she had never existed at all.
And every time, she disappeared with her parents.
They were careful. Too careful to be ordinary. They moved before questions could be asked, never staying long enough to leave roots behind. I learned their patterns the hard way—through absence, through trails that ended abruptly, through doors shut firmly in my face.
Eighteen years of this.
Eighteen years of chasing a prophecy that refused to stay still.
Until now.
Tonight, the trail did not vanish.
The magic lingered—thin, strained, but unmistakable. For the first time, the world did not rush to hide her from me. For the first time, there was no resistance when I reached out with my senses.
She was close.
I do not yet know what she looks like. I do not know if she understands what she is—or what the prophecy demands of her.
I only know this:
After eighteen years of running, the girl I have been hunting is finally slowing down.
And whether she realizes it or not, the moment I find her…
everything will burn.
- Writer
