Chapter 2: The Awakening Bond.
1072 Words
The taciturnity between them was asphyxiating. Not the stillness of an empty room, but the kind that is crowned with an unsaid truth — dense, massive, and intense.
Anna’s legs froze in place even as her thoughts begged her to act, but her body was ensnared in his stare. The eerie luminesce didn’t subside, didn’t mitigate. They fell on her like a flower in a glass vase.
The forest seemed….different. The air was no longer chilly but cozy, and her mind was wandering if he would devour her or not. Every silhouette, every shade seemed to incline toward, eavesdropping.
The woods, the forest entirely quiet down afraid they’d make a whisper or be heard.
He dropped his head to her level, examining her petite yet graceful body with an emotion that made her soft skin wriggle and rise at the same time.
“What year is it ?” He asked, his voice depressed, almost unwilling to reach neither and touch the air.
“Two….two thousand twenty-five,” she whispered as if someone was eavesdropping to hear her.
His jaws clamped shut, his stare moving past her to the remote bonfire luminescing. A drop in his face, expressing — anger, pain, maybe both or even more.
“It’s been longer than I imagined,” he said nonchalantly.
Anna gasped.” How long… how long were you buried there?”
She asked feeling concerned and interested at the same time as if she was desperate to hear a story.
He went back to her, and his smiles were cruel and mean. “Long enough for the whole universe to forget my name. Not long enough for me to forget hers.”
The way he said hers made Anna's breath stop and her heart race. She didn’t ask who he meant, she already knew.
“Hmm, what is your name ?” She asked almost desperately.
“You can call me anything, you can’t know my name”
He said unwaveringly.
“You said my soul requests your presence,” she said trying to steady her voice. “Why?”
His eyes tightened. “Magic has patterns and it also follows rules, which. It’s a thread, a red thread that can’t be broken or cut. It searches for what it wants and binds it together.
His words surround her like a spell has been cast on her, she couldn’t just accept the whole fact, but it was real, something she’d never felt before.
Anna felt her heart itch. She could feel it too — that invisible thread between them, longing, stretching.
“What are you ?” She asked desperately.
He takes a step forward. She went back. For every move or step he takes, she retreats. His presence sent chills out to the forest without warning.
When he was close enough to hear and feel her, he spoke. “A curse. A chained wolf. A war itself.
Her magic was instinctive, lightning in her veins, but again — it didn’t hit. Instead, it moved and danced towards him like a proposal.
She felt open, as if he could see her magic, her spells, her soul, or the secret she’d ever kept.
“You’re nervous, he said, slightly entertained.
He felt entertained as she was nervous, maybe scared, or completely scared.
“You haven’t given any reason not to be” she launched, though her voice shook.
He moved closer and closer until he could hear her breath, and his gaze glared into hers. “Bravo. Anxiety will keep you breathing….for now.”
She didn’t know how to feel towards him, but she felt safe with him. Someone who wouldn’t kill her in a moment.
Something whispered behind them — a muffled sound, but enough to wake Anna from her thought, completely zoned out. She quickly turned, but the trees showed nothing. When she turned back, he was already far away, looking at her with a puzzled stare.
“Go back to your life, little witch,” he said.
Feign you never saw me.
“As if I could or how can I pretend, just like that,” she murmured while spouting.
His eyes spasmed — not quite a grin, but not entirely without comfort. “We will see each other another time.”
She didn’t know if it was assurance or a threat. Maybe it was both.
Anna turned away slowly, checking if he was still there watching her but every instinct told her not to turn her back against him. But when she walked to the edge of the clearing and glanced back, — he was gone.
“He’s gone, she muttered,” feeling sad and happy at the same time unsure of how to feel that moment. At least he could have said goodbye.
The stillness of the forest was activated again.
But she could feel it in her veins, in the restless whisper of her magic.
He was still there.
Somewhere.
Watching.
She felt everything normal again, as if she were in a dream a moment ago. She wishes again to see him and also has an urge not to see him, she’s losing her mind.
She went back slowly, softly like a fairy that saved the demon, but against their policy, her policy.
How will the people feel when they find out that he’s awake?
When she returned to the bonfire, the sounds, the music, chants, and laughter shot her like a bullet, but it didn’t touch her. Her friends danced and shouted her name, but she wasn’t focused, her thoughts were all on him.
Their faces flushed with joy and happiness, drinks all over them not noticing the night has shifted, unaware that something dangerous, ancient, and mysterious now wandered freely because of her.
Anna held and opened her bottle, but the awful taste of the liquor made her drop it. She wasn’t drunk anymore. She was alerted in a way she had never been before.
A sensation.
Across the bonfire, her friend Marcy signaled, saying something about joining the dance. Anna managed a faint smile towards her, nodding but never moving from her spot.
She couldn’t shake the feeling of being anchored—like an invisible thread bound them together, the thread stretched between her and that mysterious man, alerting in the bottom of her stomach.
And deep down, she knew the fact, the truth.
This wasn’t the end of the night’s episode, it’s just the beginning.
- Writer
