Chapter 4: Run, Cordelia!
1502 Words
Chapter 4
The door had shut behind him.
The latch clicked.
And just like that—
She was alone.
Cordelia stood in the cabin’s single room, firelight licking the floorboards, her hands shaking around a knife she wasn’t sure she could use.
The body of the guard lay sprawled beside the hearth, his blood seeping into the cracks in the wood. His fingers were still curled, like he’d died reaching for something he didn’t deserve.
And beneath him—
The boards moved again.
Scratch.
She turned, heart slamming against her ribs. Her breath came fast and shallow. She backed toward the wall, blade raised, eyes on the uneven seams in the floor.
She whispered, “Don’t.”
The room pulsed.
The fire dimmed—just for a breath—like something had taken the air from it.
Then—
Bang.
The trapdoor jerked up half an inch and slammed back down.
Cordelia screamed.
Bang.
Bang.
Bang.
The body of the guard shifted with each hit, sliding toward the edge of the hidden door. His mouth hung open now. Black blood dripped slowly from his nose, bubbling as if something below him was breathing through the corpse.
The blade slipped in her hand. She gripped it tighter.
Then the noise stopped.
Dead silence.
The kind that made your skin itch.
Cordelia took a step closer. Just one. She didn’t want to. She didn’t know why she did it. Only that something—someone—was pulling.
The hair on her arms stood on end.
A whisper.
Not in the room.
Not in the air.
In her head.
“Do you remember the river?”
Cordelia froze.
Her vision flickered—just for a second.
The cabin was gone.
She was standing ankle-deep in a dark, rushing river. Night. Moonless. She was younger—twelve maybe. Her dress soaked, her arms out, reaching for someone on the bank.
A boy.
Eyes wild. Chest bleeding.
She screamed—
Then blinked.
She was back in the cabin. The whisper gone.
She stumbled backward, eyes wide. “What the hell…”
Another whisper. Softer. Male. Familiar.
“They took your memory. Scraped it clean.”
The fire guttered low.
Cordelia backed into the corner, blade up. “No. No, you’re not real.”
The floor creaked once more. A single board near the hearth lifted slowly—too slowly—just an inch.
A dark hand curled over the edge.
Not human.
Not beast.
Long, too many knuckles, skin like scorched bark.
Cordelia screamed and flung the blade—instinct, not aim.
The knife embedded in the wood with a solid thunk. The hand vanished instantly.
The board snapped shut.
The fire flared violently.
And then—
Silence again.
Cordelia slumped against the wall, chest heaving. Her skin was soaked in sweat. Her knees buckled, but she held herself upright.
What was that?
She didn’t move.
Not until the door opened behind her.
She spun, gasping.
The man who saved her stood there.
Unharmed. Silent. Still.
But something was different.
His coat was wet with snow. His hands—one of them stained faintly with something dark. Not blood. Something thicker. And the scent he carried now wasn’t pine or ash.
It was iron.
Cordelia didn’t speak.
Neither did he.
He walked past her and stared at the floor.
His voice came low. Tight.
“You opened it?”
“I didn’t touch it,” she said, voice brittle. “But it tried to come out.”
Havoc stared down at the boards.
His jaw clenched.
Cordelia stepped toward him. “What is that thing?”
He didn’t answer.
So she pressed again.
“What did it mean? The river… the memory. I— I saw something. A boy. Bleeding.”
Havoc didn’t move.
She raised her voice. “What’s under this floor?”
He turned to her—finally—and his eyes were hard as stone.
“If you want to live,” he said coldly, “don’t speak to it again.”
Cordelia stared at him.
But he was already walking away. Past the guard’s body. Toward the table where two mugs still sat.
He poured something—tea, maybe—and set it on the table.
Without turning, he said:
“Drink. Your strength will be gone by nightfall.”
She didn’t move.
“You’re not going to explain anything?”
“No,” he said. “Not yet.”
And then—
From the floorboards:
A whisper only Cordelia could hear.
“He was the first one you saved.”
⸻
The scent of blood hit her first.
Not fresh. Not warm.
Old. Metallic. Tainted with something wrong.
Cordelia stood just inside the cabin door, one hand braced against the wall, her eyes locked on Havoc’s back.
He hadn’t spoken since he warned her not to speak to the thing under the floor. Since he poured her tea like they were guests in some warped ritual.
Now he stood motionless beyond the doorway, staring into the white.
Snow drifted in sideways gusts.
And at the edge of the trees—something moved.
Cordelia’s voice broke the silence, barely above a whisper. “What is it?”
He didn’t answer.
She stepped closer.
From behind him, she saw them.
Red streaks in the snow. A trail. Bodies.
Four men. No—five.
Alpha guards, their insignias torn from their collars, faces frozen in agony. One had been disemboweled, his ribs peeled open like wings. Another still held a dagger clutched in rigor mortis, but his eyes had been gouged clean from their sockets.
Cordelia choked.
This wasn’t wolves. This wasn’t a pack.
This was something else.
“Who did this?” she whispered.
Havoc’s voice was flat. “Not me.”
“Then what?”
He glanced at her finally. His eyes were like steel under frost.
“Something that doesn’t bleed.”
She staggered back inside, slammed the door shut, locked it—knowing it wouldn’t matter. That kind of creature didn’t knock.
Havoc followed, his coat speckled with blood, boots tracking streaks across the cabin floor.
In his hand: something small and awful.
He placed it on the table.
Cordelia stared.
A silver collar.
The Luna seal etched at its center.
Hers.
Her voice collapsed into a rasp. “That’s mine.”
“I found it,” he said.
“I threw that into a river.”
“I know.”
She blinked. “What do you mean, you know?”
Havoc looked up slowly, the weight of that silence pressing the air between them.
“I know what they did to you.”
His voice wasn’t soft. It wasn’t cruel. It was controlled.
Too controlled.
Her hands shook. “Why was it outside?”
“It wasn’t left,” he said. “It was returned.”
Cordelia felt something snap in her ribs.
She moved across the room and grabbed the collar. The metal was cold—wrong. Not the one she remembered, and yet identical.
“You need to tell me who you are,” she said. “Now.”
He said nothing.
“You knew where I’d be. You knew how to hide my scent. You knew what that thing was under the floor. You brought me here, but you won’t answer anything. If you’re not with them—then what the hell are you?”
Finally, he spoke.
“My name is Havoc Stregas.”
He said it like a sentence.
Not an invitation. Not a connection.
Just a fact.
Cordelia’s stomach knotted. The name hit her with no explanation, and yet her instincts recoiled from it. The syllables felt old. Weighted.
“I’ve heard that name,” she murmured. “In the mansion.”
She didn’t say where.
She didn’t say in whispers.
She didn’t say in warnings.
Havoc said nothing.
Cordelia backed away. “Why are you helping me?”
Silence.
Again.
She picked up the collar and hurled it across the room. It hit the wall and shattered a bottle. The fire hissed as sage oil splashed across the stone, and a strange, bitter scent flooded the cabin.
“I’m not your secret,” she snapped. “I’m not your prophecy. I’m not your burden. If you want me to trust you, then tell me what’s under the floor and why it keeps talking to me.”
But Havoc didn’t flinch.
Instead, from beneath the floor, a voice rose—this time real, and male, and cruelly amused.
“He lied to you then,” it said clearly. “And he’s lying now.”
Cordelia turned in horror.
The trapdoor was trembling again.
She backed away—straight into Havoc.
His voice came low, in her ear.
“Don’t listen to it.”
She twisted to look at him—and froze.
Because he wasn’t looking at her.
He was staring at the floorboards.
Not with fear.
With recognition.
Cordelia’s pulse skidded.
The thing under the floor knew him.
And now it knew her.
- Writer
