A Debt Written in Rain
347 Words
Chapter 11: A Debt Written in Rain (The Memory)
The vision hit me with the force of a physical blow. I was seeing through Leo’s seventeen-year-old eyes.
It’s a night exactly like tonight—spring, but the rain is coming down in sheets. Our parents’ car is a twisted wreck of metal on the side of the highway. Young Leo is crawling out of the backseat, blood dripping into his eyes, screaming for Mom and Dad.
But they aren't dead yet. They are standing in the middle of the road, facing a tall, shifting pillar of smoke. The Entity.
"The bargain is met," the shadow-voice booms. "You wanted the bloodline to survive. You wanted the MC to flourish. You wanted your sons to be Kings. I gave you all of it."
"Not her," my father roars, his wolf half-shifted, his eyes a desperate gold. "You can't have Loyalty. She’s just a child!"
"She is the vessel," the Shadow replies. "Born of a wolf and a witch-line you tried to hide. She is the only thing on this earth that can hold my essence. At twenty-one, she becomes mine. That was the price for your lives all those years ago."
My mother, her face bruised but her eyes fierce with magic, steps forward. "We break the contract. We offer ourselves in her place. Blood for blood. Life for life."
The Shadow pauses. The air turns to ice. "A temporary reprieve. I will take your lives tonight, and I will stay my hand. But only until her twenty-first year. If she shifts, if she finds her anchors, the contract reactivates. You die tonight for a delay, nothing more."
"We'll take it," Mom whispers, looking back at the car where Leo is watching in horror. "Leo! Run! Take her and run!"
The Shadow lunges. There’s a flash of violet light, a scream that rips the sky open, and then... silence. Only the sound of the rain and the sobbing of a seventeen-year-old boy holding his baby sister in the wreckage.
- Writer
