chapter five: Echoes of light
460 Words
Not all truths are buried. Some wait to be remembered.
The dream returned, louder this time.
Lior stood in an endless corridor.
Voices whispered on the edge of hearing.
Wind howled through cracks in the walls, carrying a name he didn’t recognize.
“Kael…”
He reached for it, then fell.
Lior jolted awake in the darkness of his room, heart hammering. The sheets were tangled around his legs, drenched in sweat. His breath came in short gasps.
He looked down at his wrist.
The mark was glowing again.
A soft silver shimmer pulsed from beneath his skin. It didn’t hurt. But it felt… alive.
He traced it with his fingers. It was a crescent shape, sharper than he remembered. For weeks, it had been flickering each time he had the dream, each time something felt wrong around him.
He didn’t tell his foster mother. Not because she wouldn’t care she would but because he didn’t think anyone could understand what was happening.
So he kept it to himself.
Until today.
That morning, Lior stood in the garden behind their home. It was quiet, peaceful. The sun peeked through clouds, and birds sang.
He closed his eyes.
He didn’t know why, but he felt something beneath the surface of the world. Like a current. Like the air had weight.
He raised his hand.
Nothing happened.
He furrowed his brows, heart pounding. “Come on,” he whispered. “Do something.”
The wind shifted.
He felt it before he saw it, a shimmer in the air, like heat off pavement. It coiled around his fingers like smoke, colorless and weightless.
He gasped.
It followed his thoughts soft, fluid, uncertain.
And then it vanished.
The energy slipped away like water. He stumbled back, breathless but smiling.
He wasn’t imagining it.
Something was inside him.
That evening, he waited until his foster mother was asleep and started digging through old records online. He searched hospital births, missing children, even rare birthmarks. Anything strange about the day he was born.
Hours passed. And then he found something.
An old, scanned article from a newspaper in a nearby city:
“Woman Found Dead in Woods After Giving Birth , Infant Survives”
His eyes widened.
There was no name. Just that the baby had been found alive by a passing hiker. No family claimed the body. No one came for the child.
The dates matched.
His heart raced. Was that him?
He stared at the article for a long time.
And then the dream echoed again.
The voice. The shadow behind the woman. The silent scream.
Lior clenched his fists. This wasn’t just about strange dreams or glowing marks anymore.
He had been born from tragedy.
And someone didn’t want him to know why.
- Writer
