Chapter 18 – The Abandoned Camp
1132 Words
The night after Mira confronted him felt different. The forest no longer whispered secrets — it stared. Elias followed the narrow trail in silence, his thoughts tangled with the memory of her storm-bright eyes and the spirit’s final warning.
Do not love her.
But the truth pressed on his ribs like a clawed hand:
He already did.
He walked deeper into the woods, searching for distance, for clarity, for anything that wasn’t the ache Mira left inside him. He wasn’t ready to face her again — not with her magic spiking out of control, not with the terror he had seen in her gaze.
He needed answers.
He needed calm.
Instead, he found devastation.
The smell hit him first — smoke, old and stale, tainted with something metallic. He pushed through a thicket, and the forest opened into a small clearing littered with torn canvas, trampled earth, and shattered lantern glass.
A camp.
Deserted. Violently.
Elias’s pulse quickened. He knelt beside the cold ashes of a fire pit. The embers were days old, but the ground was disturbed in ways that told a story: footprints, claw marks, drag lines.
And something else.
A hunter’s insignia lay half-buried in the dirt — a small iron crest engraved with the sigil of the Northern Order. Elias recognized it immediately. The Order sent only elite witch hunters.
This one had not survived.
He turned the crest over. The metal was cracked down the middle, split as though someone had crushed it with their bare hands. That alone was enough to make his stomach twist.
But it was what lay beside it that made him go still.
A journal.
Elias picked it up carefully. The leather cover was scorched and damp, but the pages inside were mostly intact. The handwriting was jagged, rushed.
He read.
Day 3 –
“She is not what they say. The witch does not destroy out of malice. Her curse devours only those who carry grief. I fear I am vulnerable.”
Elias’s breath hitched.
Day 5 –
“I heard her singing. A lonely, broken sound. It nearly pulled me in. I must keep my distance.”
Day 7 –
“My sorrow grows heavier. I dream of my brother’s death again. The curse is feeding… I think she feels it.”
Then the final entry:
Day 9 –
“She found me.”
“She tried to warn me away.”
“But the curse inside her—”
The ink dragged off in a streak, as if the writer’s hand had frozen mid-sentence.
Elias closed the journal slowly, a cold dread creeping up his spine. This hunter hadn’t died from wounds or magic blasts. His grief had consumed him — weaponized by Mira’s curse.
As he stood, he noticed something he hadn't before. A trail of wilted flowers — small white blooms shriveled black — led from the camp toward a cluster of boulders.
Elias followed.
Behind the stones, he found the body.
The hunter lay curled on his side, untouched by animals, as if the forest itself refused to disturb him. His skin was ashen, his eyes open in horror, but what chilled Elias most — the hunter’s cheeks were streaked with dry tears.
Tears crystalized like frost.
This wasn’t death by violence.
This was death by sorrow.
A chill swept through Elias. This could be me, he thought. He swallowed hard, forcing himself to look away. Something glinted near the man’s hand.
A pendant.
He gingerly picked it up — a small silver locket, tarnished but intact. When he opened it, he froze.
Inside was a miniature portrait of the hunter with a young boy — both smiling, sunlight in their eyes.
His brother.
The grief the hunter wrote about had been real, deep, and freshly wounded. The curse must have tasted it like blood in water.
Elias closed the locket, and for a moment the world blurred.
How much grief do I carry? How much could Mira’s curse take from me before it destroys us both?
A twig snapped behind him.
Elias turned sharply, dagger drawn — but no enemy stood there.
Instead, a faint silhouette hovered between the trees. Not a spirit. Not Mira.
Another presence.
This one was smaller, softer — almost childlike. The air thickened with cold. The silhouette stepped closer, slowly forming into a young boy, no older than ten, his outlines flickering like candle flame.
Elias’s heart clenched.
The boy looked eerily similar to the portrait in the locket.
The hunter’s brother.
“Are you…” Elias whispered.
The ghost nodded once.
Pain pooled in the air around him, sadness so thick Elias felt it pressing against his sternum. The boy’s lips moved, but no sound came out. Instead, emotions flooded the clearing — loss, longing, love… and a warning.
The boy pointed at Elias’s chest.
Then toward the direction of Mira’s lair.
Then he shook his head violently.
“You want me to leave her?” Elias breathed.
The ghost’s form flickered, then steadied. He stepped closer, reaching out a trembling hand toward Elias’s face. Though no warmth touched him, Elias felt the meaning:
She didn’t kill him. The curse did.
“And it will kill me too?”
The boy lowered his gaze — a silent yes.
Elias exhaled shakily. “But she doesn’t want this. She tries to fight it.”
The ghost didn’t respond. Instead, he pointed again — first at Elias, then at the hunter, then at the body. A pattern. A warning.
Love, grief, and death follow the same path.
A sudden gust tore through the trees, scattering leaves. The boy’s form shimmered, then fragmented like mist.
“Wait!” Elias reached out. “What am I supposed to do? How do I save her?”
The ghost’s final expression was heartbreak.
Then he vanished.
Silence fell heavy.
Elias stood alone beside the dead hunter, the weight of the warning crushing his chest.
Save Mira.
Or doom himself.
Or both.
But one thing was clear:
Someone else had been hunting her — someone more skilled, more ruthless — and this man wasn’t the first casualty.
The Order wouldn’t stop.
Elias shoved the locket into his pocket, but as he did, the earth beneath his boots gave a sudden tremor. He spun.
Between the trees, a figure appeared — tall, armored, moving with a predator’s grace. A hood shadowed their face, but the insignia on their cloak was unmistakable.
Another hunter.
Alive.
Watching him.
Their voice rang out, cold and sharp.
“So you found him first.”
Elias’s blood froze as the stranger stepped into the moonlight.
“And now,” the hunter said, drawing a blade that pulsed with silver light, “you’re going to tell me exactly where the witch is.”
- Writer
