The Ghost Who Hunts
1142 Words
Aeryn moved like dusk—silent, drawn tight to the rhythm of the wild. The forest thickened the deeper they went, the light weaving itself into strange patterns across her skin. Ferns whispered beneath her boots. Branches shivered without wind.
Theron walked just ahead, every muscle poised—not fearful, but alert. He moved with a knowledge of the land Aeryn was still learning. Still chasing.
“Elric,” she whispered again, tasting the name. “Who is he, really?”
Theron didn’t stop. His voice came low. “A relic. A mistake. He was once meant to guard the Thunder-born. Now he hunts them. For power. For revenge.”
“Why?”
“He lost someone. Or claims he did. A child born under the Thunder Moon. They say she burned a village to ash before her first shift. Elric blamed the stormblood. Said it was a curse. He took an oath after that—one the old circles never sanctioned.”
Aeryn narrowed her eyes. “To kill all like me.”
Theron nodded once. “He calls it mercy.”
They moved for hours, threading between gorges and forgotten ruins where moss grew thick and time hung heavy. Aeryn barely spoke. Her thoughts turned inward, swirling like stormwinds behind her ribs.
Elric.
A hunter of her kind. The kind the world never wanted to understand. The kind it feared.
By dusk, they reached a river—wide, fast, glinting copper beneath the dying sun. Aeryn crouched near the edge and dipped her fingers in. The current pulled gently, alive.
Theron studied the treeline. “We’ll cross here.”
Aeryn stood. “If Elric’s as old as you say, he’ll track us no matter which way we turn.”
“I’m counting on it,” Theron said.
Her brow furrowed. “You want him to follow?”
“I want him seen.” He glanced at her. “If he’s hunting you, better we pick the ground where he finds us.”
She tilted her head. “And where do you want him to find us?”
A slow smile tugged at his mouth. “Where the dead remember.”
They crossed that night.
The river tried to pull at her—cold, insistent—but she held her breath and her ground. Theron led them toward the southern cliffs, to a place even birds avoided. The land changed beneath their feet. Roots grew twisted. Stones whispered names she almost recognized.
They reached a hollow, shielded by spiraling trees and a ring of blackened earth. Something terrible had happened here once.
Aeryn shivered. “What is this place?”
“An old battlefield,” Theron said. “One of the first recorded Thunder-born fell here.”
She stepped forward slowly, feeling the air thicken. The storm inside her stirred—uncertain, listening.
And then she heard it.
A whisper.
It wasn’t in words. Not in sound.
It was memory.
She dropped to her knees, hands pressed against the dirt.
A name came—not hers. But near. Someone like her.
She spoke it aloud: “Kaela.”
Theron looked sharply at her. “You heard her?”
“She’s here.” Aeryn’s voice trembled. “She’s still here.”
Suddenly, the air fractured.
Branches snapped behind them. The trees moaned low, and the night darkened unnaturally.
A figure stepped from the shadows, tall and robed in ash-colored leather. His face was half-covered by a carved bone mask, but his eyes—pale and empty—glowed with cold fire.
“Elric,” Theron said.
The man stopped a few paces away. His voice was quiet. Too quiet. “I had hoped the storm would sleep. But it always wakes again.”
Aeryn rose, power thrumming under her skin.
“You killed her,” she said.
Elric tilted his head. “Many of them. Yes.”
“Why?” Her voice cracked with thunder.
He stepped closer, ignoring Theron’s blade as it unsheathed with a hiss. “Because prophecy is a lie. Because stormblood breaks the world. It does not save it.”
“She was a child.”
“She was fire,” he snapped, the first crack in his stillness. “She burned with no reason, no control. Do you know what it’s like to watch your home vanish in light? To find only bone where your family once stood?”
Aeryn’s fists curled. “Then don’t pretend this is justice. You don’t hunt monsters—you create them.”
Elric moved fast.
Not like a man. Like something caught between now and never.
Theron blocked the first blow—barely. The air rang with the clash of silver and bone. Aeryn dodged, lightning coiling around her arms, her veins alight.
Elric came at her next. Swift. Surgical. She felt his blade skim her ribs, and the pain bloomed hot. But she didn’t fall. She roared.
The sky answered.
Lightning struck the edge of the hollow, sending sparks flying. Trees screamed as bark splintered. Elric faltered—but only for a breath.
“You don’t deserve that storm,” he growled.
“And you don’t get to decide who does!” Aeryn shouted, her voice full and raw. “I was born of the veil. I am what they fear.”
She struck him with a blast of thunder so strong the ground cracked. Elric flew backward, slamming into the blackened roots with a grunt.
Theron was beside her now, breathing hard. “He won’t stay down.”
“I don’t need him to.” Aeryn’s eyes glowed. “I need him to remember.”
She walked toward Elric, whose mask now hung broken at his jaw. A scar ran across his face—a twisted line from eye to ear.
“You think this power is a curse?” she asked softly.
Elric raised a shaking hand. “You’ll lose control. They all do.”
“Not this time.” She knelt beside him. “Because I remember who I am. And who I lost. And I won’t let your grief rewrite the world.”
She stood, turning to Theron. “We leave him.”
“What?”
“He lives with what he’s done. Let the storm haunt him.”
Elric didn’t speak. Didn’t move.
He only wept—silently, face turned to the earth.
They left him there.
By dawn, they reached the edge of the old borderlands. Smoke rose in the distance—low and steady.
Aeryn watched it, wind lifting her hair. “My home.”
Theron placed a hand on her shoulder. “Not as you remember it.”
“I don’t want it to be,” she said. “I want the truth.”
The air tasted different here. Memory. Ash. Blood.
And still—the storm waited.
Ready.
So was she.
- Writer
