Chapter Six: Sparks in the Dark
807 Words
Nyra
The air at the top of the ridge still smelled like scorched bark and blood. But dawn had come, and with it, something else.
Resolve.
Lucien said nothing as he led her to the abandoned chapel deep in the woods beyond the borderlands. It stood crooked against the sunrise, covered in moss and thorned ivy. Once a temple to the Moon Goddess, now a forgotten ruin.
A fitting place to remember who she once was.
He held the door open for her, but didn’t step inside.
“This is your ground now,” he said simply.
Nyra nodded and crossed the threshold alone.
Inside, the air was thick with old magic.
Not the sharp, controlled energy of spells—but the ancient, sleeping kind. Raw. Watching.
She walked past crumbling pews and broken stained glass. Moonlight poured through the ceiling where the roof had caved, turning dust into silver snowfall.
In the center of the room was a circle of black stone.
Lucien’s voice drifted in behind her. “That was where the first Alpha-Mage trained. The last Moon-Blooded heir.”
Nyra stepped into the circle.
The moment her foot crossed the stone, her mark flared.
Her breath caught.
The world shifted.
Flashes.
Not memories—echoes.
Blood on snow.
A woman screaming.
A crown falling from someone’s hand.
A wolf—a great silver wolf—bowing before her, wounded, eyes pleading.
A promise: You must never remember. Not until you’re ready.
Then darkness.
Nyra stumbled, gripping her head as the images vanished like shattered glass.
Lucien was suddenly there, catching her before she fell.
“You saw something,” he said, voice low.
She nodded. “Pieces. Like broken film. I saw… a crown.”
Lucien's jaw tightened. “You were meant to rule. Once.”
She swallowed. “And now?”
“Now?” he said softly. “You must learn how to survive what that memory will awaken.”
The training began at dusk.
Lucien showed her how to ground herself—feet planted, energy drawn from the earth. He didn’t touch her, didn’t guide her with hands. He only watched and spoke, letting her own body remember what it could.
“Magic lives in instinct,” he said. “You don’t learn it. You reclaim it.”
Nyra raised her palm. Focused.
Nothing.
Again.
Nothing.
Lucien knelt beside her. “You’re trying to summon it like you’re commanding a weapon. You’re not a warrior yet, Nyra. You’re a storm that hasn’t decided where to break.”
She grit her teeth. “Then help me break.”
He paused, then stood and held out his arm.
“Hit me.”
She blinked. “What?”
“You’re angry,” he said. “Use it. Hit me.”
Nyra hesitated, then swung.
Lucien dodged effortlessly.
“Again.”
She punched.
Missed.
Again.
He caught her wrist, spinning her with zero effort.
“Again.”
And again.
And again.
Until finally—
The fire answered.
Her arm snapped forward with a scream, and a burst of heat exploded from her palm, blasting Lucien backward into the chapel wall. He hit the stone with a grunt and slumped to the floor.
Nyra gasped, running to him. “Lucien! Are you—?”
He laughed.
A low, pained chuckle.
“I said hit me, not incinerate me.”
She looked down at her hands. “I didn’t even know what I was doing.”
“Exactly,” he said, getting to his feet. “Your instincts are waking up. You’ve been caged too long. Now your magic is clawing its way out.”
She looked up at him. “Is that what I was before? A weapon?”
Lucien didn’t answer immediately.
Then: “You were more than that. But yes—when the war came, you were the prophecy’s sword.”
Nyra swallowed hard.
“And you hid that from me.”
“I hid everything from you. To give you peace. A normal life.”
“But I’m not normal,” she said softly. “And peace isn’t who I am.”
He met her eyes, guilt and pride and something gentler behind the storm.
“No. It’s not.”
That night, she lay alone in the center of the moonlit circle.
The stone beneath her back felt warm now, like something living.
She let the images come again.
Blood.
Snow.
The silver wolf.
But this time, another face appeared—clearer than the rest.
A girl.
With the same eyes.
Hers.
Only younger. Wilder. Laughing as she danced through the flames, her hair silvered by ash, her hands glowing with moonfire.
“Who are you?” Nyra whispered.
The girl looked back.
And smiled.
“I’m you,” the echo said. “The version that was never afraid.”
- Writer
