Chapter: 2
1167 Words
A hush settled over the ruined grounds of Aetherwyn—not peaceful, but suffocating.
Heavy with smoke, ash, and silence.
The kind of silence that only follows screams.
Fires still hissed in the distance, feasting on what little remained.
After a while,
A pulse of light.
And Isaldora reappeared.
She landed hard in the shattered courtyard—onto bloodstained stone, her knees buckling as the world slammed into her chest.
Her fingers dug into the scorched ground. Her chest heaved. A strangled sound escaped her—not a scream. Just a broken gasp, sharp and thin, as if her lungs couldn’t bear the air anymore.
The silence was deafening.
And all at once, the stillness felt too loud, too cruel.
She crawled forward, fingers trembling, and reached her brother’s hand.
Cold.
Her gaze darted from him to her parents—both still, both gone. Her lips parted, but no sound came. Just a shallow breath. A sob locked in her chest.
She lowered her head and wept—like a child who had lost the whole world in a single night.
This was her home. Her family. Her people. Her world.
Gone.
Everything inside her shattered. Pain. Grief. Helplessness. That’s all she could feel. That’s all she was.
She clutched her heart as it cracked—and kept cracking. Too much. Too fast. She couldn’t breathe.
And then—
Something inside her snapped.
Tears fell, but her eyes no longer held innocence. Only steel.
A stillness fell inside her. As new feelings coiled in her gut.
Rage.
Revenge.
Vengeance.
It was all that she could feel.
“I’ll kill them,” she whispered. “Every last one.”
Her voice rose with each word, burning with fury. “I will make them bleed. I will make them suffer. I will tear their world apart like they tore mine.”
A scream tore from her throat—ragged, feral, louder than her body should’ve allowed—a sound of agony, fury, power. The sky shivered.
Then came the pain—not from the outside, but from within.
Something awakened.
Her skin burned. As a pulse of power surged through her, wild and ancient. She stumbled back, eyes wide as runes—silver, glowing, celestial—began to appear on her skin, swirling across her arms, her collarbones, her spine, marking her with the ancient magic of her bloodline.
She gasped, but it didn’t hurt. It felt… inevitable. Her hands shook—with power.
Power surged through her like a tide.
She rose—no longer trembling, breathing hard.
Her hair lifted in the windless air, the runes pulsing with life. She looked down at her family—her heart still broken, still bleeding—but her purpose was now forged in steel.
She extended her hand and a dagger appeared in her palm.
Without hesitation, she slit her palm, letting the blood drip and then pressed it onto the blackened ground where her family lay.
“I Isaldora Vaneese Aetherwyn,” she said, voice ringing in the stillness, empty and shaking, “swear on my blood…on my family... on the fallen blood of Aetherywn… I will give them back everything they gave me.”
“I will not rest until every last one of them is dead.”
“I will bring them the same pain… no, worse. They will drown in it.”
“I will become their doom.”
“No mercy. No survivors.”
The ground trembled beneath her feet as her blood soaked the soil. Her runes flared, burning brighter than ever. Sealing the oath.
Isaldora stood still, blood dripping from her palm, surrounded by the bodies of her family. The storm building inside her now echoed in the world around her.
Lifting her hand, she whispered an incantation—words older than language—a language she didn't know she knew before, powerful, unnatural for her age, and cast a curse upon the land.
“For those who dare step upon this sacred soil—
May the ground blister their skin,
May their bones turn brittle, their lungs choke on ash.
Let their steps falter, their minds unravel—
Driven mad by echoes of what they destroyed.
May their souls rot from within,
Shattered beyond salvation."
The sky cracked open with a deafening thunderclap, lightning streaking across the sky. Rain poured down, not gentle—but hard, furious—soaking the scorched land, hissing as it struck burning stone.
Isaldora’s eyes glowed beneath her tear-streaked face. Her voice deepened, steadied—almost inhuman now.
"Once a sanctuary of joy and light,
Let this land now be cloaked in sorrow.
Let it be cursed, let it haunt all who enter,
A graveyard of the warmth it once held.
Let it bleed them dry."
The ground beneath her pulsed—cracked—answering her command.
“Let them believe Aetherwyn was erased—lost to ruin and time—
But may this curse whisper the truth into their nightmares:
That what they buried is not gone.
It is waiting.
Let Aetherwyn vanish… until it returns in vengeance.”
As the final word left her lips, a wave of raw magic burst outward from her chest, washing over the ruined land. Trees crumbled into dust. Flames extinguished. Land faded into shadow. Aetherwyn vanished, swallowed by a spell that veiled it from the world’s eye.
Only the curse remained.
Then—silence.
To the world, Aetherwyn was gone—as if it had never been there.
Only a wasteland remained—barren, cursed, steeped in wrath.
And in the center of it all stood Isaldora.
Small.
Alone.
Eyes rimmed red—crying, but no tears left. Burning. Her starlit hair clung to her face, soaked in rain, streaked with ash and blood.
No longer a child.
No longer innocent.
Just quiet now.
Just empty.
And full of something new
Once, she had laughed carelessly—
the kind of laughter only children know.
Once, she believed people were good—
that kindness was truth, not a mask.
That the world could be changed—simply by doing good.
But the world had shown her otherwise.
It hadn’t just taken everything she loved.
It taught her that goodness was never enough.
It tore the light from her soul and left nothing soft behind.
She looked once more at her family—her home—her everything.
Then, with the storm still roaring above her, Isaldora turned and vanished into the rain.
Leaving,
With an oath in her heart and a land with a curse.
Far off, a howl shattered the night—long, hollow, and aching with something unnamed.
It rolled across the darkness like a mourning song, bleeding through the silence.
The sound clung to the air, sharp and spectral, echoing with grief unspoken.
It coiled through the trees, winding like smoke, like memory.
A breath held too long… stretched too thin…
Until all that remained was the faint trace of something once there—now lost.
- Writer
