Chapter 5: Choose
1156 Words
The earth split open with a sound like the world tearing apart.
Steam and black smoke poured out of the fissure, stinking of old blood and wet stone.
“Daughter of Carter,” the voice said again. It crawled up my spine, cold and wrong. “It’s time.”
I couldn’t move. My feet were rooted to the broken stone.
My eyes locked on the clawed hands pulling at the edges of the hole. Each finger was longer than mine. Nails black and cracked.
“Don’t listen to it,” Forsaken growled. He stepped in front of me, body tense, claws out. Blood dripped from a cut above his brow, but he didn’t seem to notice. “It lies. It always lies.”
“What is it?” I whispered. My voice shook.
“The first cursed,” Forsaken said. “The one who started this. The one the council couldn’t kill.”
The hands heaved. Dirt and stone fell away.
A head rose out of the pit.
His skin was pale, stretched tight over bone, like he’d been buried too long and forgotten how to rot. Eyes were empty pits, but they found me instantly.
“Choose,” he said. His voice was everywhere at once, inside my skull and outside it. “Break me, and free your mother’s soul. Or join me, and end the world.”
Behind us, the rogues broke through the trees. Twenty, maybe thirty. Eyes glowing gold, mouths wet with hunger. They didn’t attack. Not yet. They were waiting. Even cursed wolves knew better than to get between me and the first.
Forsaken’s grip on my hand tightened until it hurt.
“Don’t answer it,” he said. “Not yet. You’re not ready.”
“Ready for what?” I snapped. Fear made me angry. “To die? To watch you die? To watch them take me?”
“Ready to choose,” he said. He turned to face me, and for the first time since I met him, he looked scared. “If you break him, the curse dies. But the bond dies too. You’ll forget me. All of it.”
My chest clenched.
“And if I join him?”
“The curse lives,” Forsaken said quietly. “And so do I. But the world burns. The council, the packs, the humans. Everything.”
The first cursed laughed. It was like stones grinding together.
“Such a small choice for a girl who holds the end of everything.”
I looked past Forsaken, at the rogues, at the pit, at the empty eyes of the thing that started it all. Then I looked at Forsaken.
At the way his jaw clenched when he said my name.
At the way he’d stood between me and death twice now without asking.
At the bond in my chest, burning like it was the only real thing left.
“I’m not choosing between you and the world,” I said.
The first cursed stilled.
“What?”
“I’m choosing me.”
Power surged. Not from the earth, not from him. From me.
The silver light in my hands flared blinding bright. The curse in my chest answered, and for the first time, it didn’t feel like it was controlling me.
It felt like it was mine.
I stepped forward, past Forsaken, toward the pit.
“Get out of my head,” I said to the first cursed. “Get out of my blood.”
The first cursed reared back, hissing.
“You cannot—”
I slammed my glowing hands into the earth.
The ground shook.
The bond in my chest snapped taut, and I felt it—every cursed soul under the ground, sleeping, waiting.
I didn’t break them.
I didn’t join them.
I claimed them.
“Mine,” I whispered.
The fissure slammed shut.
The rogues howled, but it wasn’t hunger anymore. It was fear.
The first cursed screamed, and his voice cracked apart like glass.
“You… cannot… hold…”
Then he was gone. Sucked back into the earth, sealed by my will.
Silence fell.
My knees hit the stone. The light faded from my hands, leaving them shaking and empty.
The curse was still there, but it was quiet now. Like a sleeping wolf at my side.
Forsaken was at my side in an instant, catching me before I hit the ground.
“What did you do?” he breathed.
“I chose,” I said. My throat was dry. “I chose us.”
The bond in my chest didn’t burn anymore.
It hummed. Content.
Above us, the rogues retreated into the trees. The danger wasn’t gone. But for the first time since I woke up in this forest, I wasn’t running.
I was in control.
The silence didn’t last.
A low tremor ran through the ground, different from before. This one wasn’t the first cursed trying to break free. This was something else. Something watching.
Forsaken felt it too. His claws dug into my arm, not to hurt, but to steady me. “Get up,” he said quietly. “Now.”
I tried, but my legs were jelly. Using the curse like that had drained me dry. For the first time, I understood why my mother never fought back. It wasn’t weakness. It was cost.
“Can’t,” I managed. “Give me a minute.”
“We don’t have a minute.” His eyes flicked to the treeline. “They felt you.”
“Who?”
“The council.” He pulled me to my feet, arm around my waist to hold me up. “What you just did… it wasn’t subtle. Every pack within fifty miles felt the bond shift.”
Dread pooled in my stomach. I’d sealed the first cursed, but I’d also rung a bell.
“They’ll come for you,” Forsaken said. “Not to help. To contain. To kill.”
The curse hummed under my skin, quiet but awake. It didn’t feel like a burden anymore. It felt like a weapon.
“Let them come,” I said. My voice was steadier now. “I’m done running.”
He stopped walking and looked down at me, something unreadable in his eyes. “You know what that means, right? Once the council arrives, there’s no hiding. No going back to being just a girl in the wrong forest.”
“Good,” I said. “I’m tired of being just a girl.”
A crack split the air to the east. Not thunder. Something breaking.
Forsaken’s jaw tightened. “We move. Now.”
He shifted my weight so I could walk on my own.
Then we broke into a run toward the west. The trees blurred past us, the moonlight flickering between branches.
Behind us, the rogues were gone. Ahead of us, the council was coming.
In my chest, the curse purred.
Ready for the next fight.
- Writer
