Claimed by my Clan’s Killer

I was chasing fireflies the night my world ended. They floated over the fields, pale and flickering, drifting low over the grass like bubbles blown by dozens of children. I ran after them barefoot, my dress sweeping the blades of grass, laughing every time one slipped through my fingers. My mother’s laughter followed close behind mine, warm and easy, the kind of sound I was too familiar with and didn’t know yet to treasure. “You’ll never catch one, little moon,” she teased, her voice carrying the hush of the field. “Yes, I will,” I insisted, lunging for a firefly that danced just out of reach. She caught one instead, cupping it gently between her palms, and knelt beside me so I could see its glow pulse against her skin. “The goddess blessed us tonight,” she whispered, her eyes soft in the dark. “It means prosperity and peace.” Peace. I remember that word. How fragile and gentle it felt even before I knew what it meant. Then came the scream. It resonated through the night, sharp, eerie, and close enough to silence the crickets. My mother froze in horror. The firefly between her fingers dimmed and went out as if even it understood. Soon after, another scream followed, then another, until the night was a chorus of them, rising from the direction of the village. I turned towards the village, facing the bright orange light that had begun to rise towards the sky. “Mama?” I called out in fear. “Lysandra….” Her voice trembled, thin and urgent, nothing like the woman who’d been teasing me a moment ago. Before we could take a single step, the ground shuddered beneath heavy paws, a sound too large, too close. From between the trees, two wolves emerged, massive and black-eyed, their fur stained with blood that wasn’t their own. Despite their size, they moved with precision, unhurried and certain, the way predators move when they already know they’ve won. My mother quickly stepped in front of me, hands glowing faintly. “Go back,” she said, pushing me behind her. “Go!” One of the wolves lunged. I didn’t even have time to scream before another shape crashed into it, a blur of dark fur and iron. My father. He hit the beast with an iron axe, cracking its skull and driving it into the dirt in a spray of blood and torn earth. “Take her!” he barked, not turning from the fight. “Hide yourselves! Quickly!” My mother grabbed my arm, her grip almost painful as she pulled me stumbling through smoke that had begun engulfing the atmosphere like a storm. The air hung tight in my nose and the smell of burning wood made it harder to breathe. Behind us, the clash of claws and snarling teeth sounded far closer than it should have. I looked back just once and saw my father disappear in a clash of metal and bloodthirsty fangs. My mother didn’t let me stop to watch. She never let go of my arm, even as her own breath broke into sobs she refused to let slow her down. By the time we reached the temple, our world was nothing but fire. The once-white stones of the altar now glowed red in the reflection of flames and the carved faces of the goddess along its base seemed to weep as it melted. My mother shoved me toward the altar and slid open a hollow space in the stone, just wide enough for a child to crawl through. “Hide your light,” she whispered, cupping my face with shaking hands, brushing away tears I hadn’t realised had fallen. “Hide it, and live on. Do you understand?” I didn’t. No, I didn’t want to. But I nodded, because her voice broke on the last word and I knew that arguing was not an option then. It would break us both. She pushed me into the dark. The stone scraped my arms as I forced myself into the darkness. As she slid the opening back over the base. I could hear her outside, murmuring prayers under her breath, standing between me and everything that was coming. Through a c***k, I watched them pour in. Wolves, more than I could ever hope to count, moving like a school of piranhas, feasting on anything that dared stand in their path. I caught glimpses of body parts in their mouths and heard bodies hitting the cold earth, with healers begging uselessly for mercy, their silver light flaring bright and desperate before dimming out one by one, like the fireflies my mother and I had chased only hours before. Then my mother’s voice rose above it all in defiance, and just as suddenly, it ended in a scream. I bit my hand to keep me from crying out, the taste of blood, like iron filled my mouth. Smoke crept through the c***k, thick and blinding but it was not nearly as stifling as having to hide my voice as I heard my mother fall I could see someone that stood apart from them, someone I could feel with every bone and skin that was the leader. Tall, armoured, his eyes filled with destruction. His sword dripped with the blood of healers under the moon. When he turned, his face caught the light, calm and proud and I marked it into my memories. When the last body fell, he lifted his blade high and chanted, “For the glory of Runeblood!” His men answered with a roar that shook the ruined temple, and then, as quickly as they had come, they left, their voices fading into the night like thunder rolling away. I stayed hidden long after the silence returned, too afraid they might circle back, until only the crackle of dying flame remained. When I finally forced myself to crawl out, the temple I had known my whole life was gone. Nothing but ruin and smoke. Years of history kept in place by my people, all burned to the ground in dirt. The air was heavy with the smell of charred people. My bare feet crunched on something soft and brittle. Ash. I walked through what was left of the village. The river that once reflected the moon and glittered now ran black and still. Houses I had grown up beside laid in burned heaps. The healers’ banners, once proud symbols hung from every doorway, lay trampled into the mud, unrecognizable. I found my mother lying limp. She was in better shape than most of the other corpses but was badly hurt. Four deep claw marks tore across her belly, with another set raking her neck. Her body was completely rigid and the beautiful warmth she once exuded was gone, leaving behind only a hollow shell. Around her was her necklace, a small crescent moon carved from bone, half-buried in ash and blood. She wore it at all times. I took it off her neck and held it so tightly that the edge bit into my palm and drew blood of my own. For a long moment I could only stare at her, unable to make my mind accept what my eyes were showing me. This was still her face. Still the same nose I had always heard mine was a replica of, the same mouth that had whispered about fireflies and prosperity only hours ago. It didn’t seem possible that a face so familiar could belong to someone who was gone. “Mama?” My voice came out small, cracked, more breath than sound. I touched her shoulder, gently, the way I might have if she were only sleeping, half expecting her eyes to flutter open and scold me for wandering too far from the house. She didn’t stir. Nothing about her stirred at all. “Mama, wake up.” I shook her harder this time, my small hands fisting in the fabric of her dress, streaked dark with blood that had long since stopped being warm. “Please. Please, wake up. I’m sorry. I’ll hide my light, I promise, I’ll be so good, just wake up.” She didn’t answer. She would never answer again, and some part of me understood that even as the rest of me refused to believe it. I don’t remember deciding to lie down beside her. One moment I was kneeling, shaking her, and the next I had curled myself into the curve of her body, the way I used to when thunderstorms frightened me from sleep, pressing my face into her shoulder even though there was no warmth left there to comfort me. Her blood soaked into my dress, into my hair, but I didn’t care. I only wanted to be close to her one more time. The sobs came without permission, tearing out of me in ragged, ugly bursts that hurt my chest more than the smoke had. I cried the way only a child can, without shame, without restraint, my whole body shaking with it, my fists still curled tight around the necklace even as my nails bit crescents into my own palm. I cried until my throat was raw and my eyes burned worse than the smoke had left them, and even then I couldn’t stop, because stopping meant this was real, and some stubborn, desperate part of me still wasn’t ready to let it be real. “Please don’t leave me,” I whispered against her cold shoulder, again and again, until the words lost their shape and became nothing but sound, a small broken chant against a silence that refused to break. “Please, Mama. Please don’t leave me here alone.” Dawn came without mercy. Orange light crept over the hills and revealed everything the darkness had hidden, the full scope of what remained. Bodies I recognized. Faces of people who had once pressed sweets into my palm at the market, who had braided my hair, who had sung with my mother at the spring rites. All of them silent now, nothing but flesh and bones. I don’t remember deciding to leave. One moment I was kneeling in the wreckage of the temple, and the next I was walking, the necklace clutched hard enough to leave a mark against my palm, my bare feet carrying me away from everything I had ever known toward a horizon that offered nothing but distance. Under the fading moonlight, I made a promise to myself. To remember. To survive. To make them pay no matter what.