Chapter 4: Dirty little Secret
1193 Words
The night was much colder than usual with a cloudy atmosphere, limited visibility. I went to Evaroth to pay Rafa a visit. Where he stood near the base of a moss covered tree, with blood crusted on his knuckles.
The beast inside him was stirred,agitated, unsatisfied.
"The beast will feed on your grief if you let it. You must feed it purpose, not pain."
“How did you find me?” He blinks at me and asked..
“You’re not hard to find, Rafa.”
“You left the woods unprotected? What if another wolf pack invades while you’re here?”
I stepped closer, “You don’t need to worry. The woods are the least of my problems right now.”
Looking at the crescent mark burned into his chest.
“I’ve come to help… to stand with you. You shouldn’t face this alone.”
He turned away from me jaw tight. “Why? Why join me? This has nothing to do with you. I’m better off alone.”
“You need me, Rafa.”
He turned slowly, his voice barely hiding suspicion. “But why?”
I hesitated for a while before I replied to him.
“Because I know the ways of Zehron far more than what I told you when you came to Eldenwoods to see me.”
Rafa turned to me looking straight into my eyes eager to hear what I have to say
The wind hushed between us, he was unsettled. He stepped closer, instinct pulling his voice rougher.
“What else do I need to know about Zehron?”
I looked away. I moved slowly to the fallen log near him and sat down and when I spoke again, he sensed my voice was not the voice of a sorceress or seer, it was the voice of someone who had once loved and lost.
“Zehron was my mate.”
Rafa froze as he stared at me stunned silence. Rafa…I have a tragic history with Zehron which nearly traumatized me. We were young, gifted, chosen by fate and eventually we fell in love.
“At first we believed we were destined to lead a new spiritual order of black magic and shapeshifters. Zehron as the guardian, I as the spiritual guide. He was brave, passionate. But the more he absorbed power from the Pale Moon Spirit, the more… twisted he became.”
Rafa listened, still as stone.
“He stopped serving the spirit and started worshiping it. He believed the wolf was divine, that he was chosen not to protect, but to rule.”
I turned to him now, with flames in my eyes
“He asked me to join him. To merge my soul with the spirit of the woods and become… something dark. Something eternal.”
“But i refused,” He performed forbidden ritual in secret
Zehron was obsessed with this dark power he attempted a soul-binding ritual
“ A soul-binding ritual”?..
Yes Rafa, he needed to sacrifice a seer to awaken a deeper wolf within and dominate other territories.
The seer he tried to sacrifice. Was “me”.
I survived only because the forest itself rebelled, warning me in a dream before the ritual. So I fled deep to Eldenwoods and cut the bond both magically and emotionally.
Since then, I have been wandering as a protector of balance, watching from afar, but never forgiving myself for what I once believed in.
Rafa took a step closer and said… “It wasn’t your fault.”
I looked up, startled.
Then he said…“You don’t have to carry the shame or blame yourself. What’s gone is gone. What we do next is what matters now.”
A silence stretched between them. Heavy. True.
Rafa’s heart stilled.
I visited the spirit realm in trance I saw Jasmine trapped and surrounded by ritual symbols, the very marks that killed her. She’s in pain, Rafa. Deep pain. Not even the spirits of her father can save her in the realm she is now.
“If the next ritual is completed…”
“…her soul will be consumed. Forever.”
Silence.
Only the wind. Only the sound of two broken people standing on the edge of something ancient and terrible.
“Then we stop it. Together.” Rafa said boldly
She reached for his hand. He didn’t pull away.
Their fingers met. scarred, powerful, warm.
As we walked through the winding forest path, mist curling like snakes around our boots, Rafa spoke again with a low voice.
“Not long ago… before tonight… I saw him.”
“Who?”
“The man. The one without a shadow. From the Festival.”
I stopped walking. “What?”
Rafa kept walking, slowly. “He was at the market square a few nights ago. Dressed like a merchant. Selling charms and bones under lantern light. I almost didn’t recognize him. But the moment he looked at me
I figured he was the same person I ran into or should I say ran into me when I was looking for Jasmine. The one Jasmine’s friend mentioned.”
Sariah’s breath caught. “And you let him go?”
“I could’ve ended him.” Rafa’s tone darkened. “The wolf inside me wanted blood. I almost gave in.
“So then what did you do”
“I confronted him,” said Rafa. “ I Followed him into an alley. He tried to reach for something, maybe a weapon. But I pinned him. And I made him talk.”
“He confessed. Said Jasmine’s blood was ‘pure’
Said she was chosen. For Zehron’s awakening.”
(Rafa clenched his jaw)
“It wasn’t random, Sariah. She was marked. From the beginning.”
“The Ritual of the Pale Moon... It requires innocence. A soul not bound to this world by pact or power. Jasmine was exactly what Zehron needed.”
“He also said something else. That the next ritual’s already set in motion. And when it’s complete—Zehron will walk the earth again. Not just in dreams.”
Sariah’s voice turned ice-cold. “Then we’re almost out of time.”
Rafa nodded. “Before I left him, I made sure he understood one thing.”
“What did you say?”
Rafa’s eyes burned with fire and memory. “I told him to tell Zehron… the child he sacrificed has a godfather. And that I don’t sleep anymore.”
Sariah’s breath caught—half gasp, half admiration. She shook her head. “You’re not who you were in Eldenwoods.”
“No,” Rafa said, a bitter tone in his voice. “I’m not the man who left Evaroth.”
We stood in silence for a moment, the trees above us rustling like they too were listening.I stepped closer. My hand touched his hands again but this time firmly. A bond begins to grow in the cracks between grief and fury.
“Then we fight together,” she said softly.
He looked down at our joined hands smiling . And for the first time in a long time, the beast inside him didn’t rage.
- Writer
