Chapter 10: The Chains That Bind
960 Words
The forest was quiet again.
Too quiet.
Aelira walked slowly through the trees, her steps light but sure. The morning sun filtered through the branches, warm on her skin, but the warmth didn’t reach her heart.
Thalia trailed behind, glancing over her shoulder every few steps.
“Do you think he’ll come back?” Thalia asked, still unsettled from the stranger in the clearing.
“I don’t know,” Aelira said. “But I think he was a warning.”
“A warning of what?”
Aelira looked down at the mark on her wrist. It had faded again, no longer glowing, but it was still warm, like a heartbeat under her skin.
“That something old is waking up,” she said. “Something more than just me.”
They returned to the edge of the clearing where their supplies were hidden in the underbrush. Aelira crouched down to retrieve her pack. But as she touched the leather strap, a sharp jolt rushed through her chest.
She gasped, her vision swimming.
“Aelira?” Thalia rushed to her side. “What’s wrong?”
But Aelira couldn’t speak.
A vision struck, quick and brutal.
Chains. Silver chains. A cold cell. Screams.
A flash of Kaelen’s eyes, furious and distant.
Then a darker face. A man she didn’t know.
And her voice that is crying, begging but not for freedom.
For truth.
Then, it was gone.
She fell forward, barely catching herself.
Thalia grabbed her. “You’re bleeding!”
Aelira looked down. Her palms were scratched, bleeding from the rough stones on the forest floor. But that wasn’t what Thalia meant.
The mark on her wrist was bleeding. The silver-blue lines had cracked, and dark red blood oozed from the break.
“No,” Aelira whispered. “This isn’t just a mark. It’s… it’s connected to something deeper.”
Thalia tore a strip from her tunic and wrapped Aelira’s wrist. “We have to get help.”
“No,” Aelira said firmly. “We need to go to the old healer. The one in the mountains. The one who helped the Lunas before me.”
Thalia blinked. “I thought she was a myth.”
“She’s real,” Aelira said. “I remember her now. Not from this life but from the dreams. And if I don’t go to her… I won’t survive what’s coming.”
---
Kaelen sat in the war room, but he wasn’t listening.
His advisors droned on about borders and territory, but his thoughts were far away, in the forest, in the past, in a stone circle lit by moonlight.
His hand still gripped the old scroll.
He had read it five times that morning.
The words haunted him.
“The Blessed Luna shall rise only when the Alpha accepts his failure, not his pride.”
He had failed her.
He had listened to the lies.
He had believed she was nothing but a lowborn Omega, a healer too proud for her place.
“Kaelen.”
He looked up. His mother, Queen Rhian, stood at the edge of the table, her silver eyes fixed on him.
“You’re not listening.”
“I am now,” he said, standing slowly.
She studied him. “You’ve changed.”
“Not enough,” he muttered.
Rhian’s expression softened. “You’ve seen the signs, haven’t you? The visions. The mark.”
“Yes,” he said. “She’s the one, Mother. The Luna. The true Luna.”
Queen Rhian sighed. “Then why are you still here?”
Kaelen didn’t answer. Because the truth was, he was afraid.
Afraid that when he found her, she wouldn’t forgive him.
And maybe she shouldn’t.
---
Aelira and Thalia climbed the rocky trail leading to the mountain healer. The air grew thinner, cooler. The trees thinned, revealing gray stone cliffs and deep valleys below.
Every step made Aelira’s body ache. Her wrist burned with each heartbeat, but she pushed forward.
By the time they reached the stone arch carved into the mountainside, Aelira was barely standing.
An old woman appeared at the mouth of the cave.
She looked almost blind, her eyes a cloudy white. But she walked like someone who saw far more than most.
“You’ve come,” she said.
Aelira tried to bow, but her knees gave out.
The old woman caught her with surprising strength. “Easy, child. You’re not the first Luna to crawl through fire.”
Thalia stood behind, shocked. “You knew she was coming?”
“I saw her in the smoke last moon,” the old woman said. “Just like I saw her in the ashes years ago.”
She brought Aelira inside. The cave was warm, lit with fire and crystals that pulsed with soft light. Carvings lined the walls, stories of Lunas past.
The healer laid Aelira down on a bed of moss and leaves.
She touched her wrist gently, unwrapping the cloth.
“Ah,” she whispered. “The blood has come.”
“What does it mean?” Aelira asked, her voice shaking.
“It means your magic is breaking through the lies,” the woman said. “It means your memory is returning.”
Aelira swallowed hard. “Then… what am I?”
“You are the Luna born under the second moon,” the woman said. “Blessed, yes. But cursed, too. For your rise will come with loss. Great loss.”
Aelira closed her eyes.
Loss.
She had already lost her home, her name, her bond.
What more could she lose?
But as the healer began chanting in the Old Tongue, and the pain in her wrist turned to fire, Aelira knew the answer.
She hadn’t lost everything yet.
And she wasn’t done fighting.
- Writer
