Chapter 3 – The other mark
549 Words
Rina pulled her sleeve back slowly… and there it was.
The thin silver crescent.
Soft, glowing, impossibly alive beneath her skin.
Aiden watched her in silence. His golden eyes were sharp, observant—never cruel, just unbearably knowing.
“How long has it been there?” he asked.
“Since this morning,” Rina whispered. “I don’t even remember being hurt.”
“You weren’t,” Aiden said. “It doesn’t come from a wound. It comes from a bloodline.”
The words hit her like cold rain.
“Bloodline? What does that mean?”
Aiden’s gaze drifted toward the dark trees. His voice lowered, almost mournful.
“It means someone in your family… isn’t completely human.”
The night seemed to draw closer, the wind threading through the branches with a warning whisper.
Rina shook her head. “No. My family is normal. We live normal lives. My mother teaches at the school. My father—”
“Your father works in the forest,” Aiden interrupted gently.
Rina froze.
Aiden’s voice softened even more. “Has he ever been gone on full-moon nights?”
Her breath hitched. Memories rose like ghosts.
Her father slipping home late.
Mud caked on his boots.
Scratches he brushed off as “nothing.”
Nights when he smelled of pine… and something else she never identified.
No.
No, it couldn’t be—
A branch snapped deeper in the woods.
Aiden stood instantly. His eyes sharpened. “They’re near.”
“Hunters?” Rina breathed.
Aiden nodded. “Not just hunters. Something stronger. Something older.”
He stepped closer, voice firm but gentle.
“If the mark is on you… they will come for you too.”
Rina stepped back, heart pounding. “Why me?”
Aiden looked at her with a quiet sorrow that made her stomach twist.
“Because the moon always collects its children.”
That night, Rina ran home.
She didn’t dare look over her shoulder.
The village lights glowed like tiny promises of safety—
but she didn’t believe them anymore.
Her father stood waiting at the door.
“Rina,” he said softly, “where have you been?”
His tone was calm. Too calm.
And for the first time in her life… Rina saw something she had never noticed.
His eyes were brown.
But beneath the brown—
a faint shimmer flickered.
Something golden.
Later, Rina lay wide awake in her room, staring at the ceiling. Her heartbeat pounded in her ears.
She checked her wrist again.
The silver mark glowed faintly.
Warm. Almost pulsing.
She closed her eyes—
A whisper brushed against her ear.
“Run.”
Her eyes flew open.
Her room was silent.
Empty.
But the voice had been real. She felt it.
Something—or someone—was trying to warn her.
She crossed to the window and pulled the curtain back.
The forest loomed in the distance, the moon hanging above it like a silver eye. Light spilled over the mountain like a beckoning finger.
Her breath caught.
Someone stood outside, near the old barn.
Luka.
Still as stone.
His face unreadable.
His eyes locked directly on her window.
He slowly lifted his arm.
And showed her his wrist.
A silver crescent glowed there—
the same as hers.
- Writer
