Chapter5
979 Words
I wake with a scream tearing out of my throat.
It feels like something is dragging the sound from deep inside my chest, pulling it upward like a hook. Pain follows—white-hot and sudden—flooding my ribs, my spine, my skull. My heart hammers so hard it feels like it’s trying to escape my body.
Hands grab me. Too many. Too fast.
“Rowan!” my mother cries.
Her voice cuts through the panic, sharp with fear. I gasp, sucking in air like I’ve been underwater too long. Firelight flickers above me, throwing warped shadows across wooden beams. The den smells like smoke and herbs and sweat.
My chest burns.
Not pain exactly—pressure. A deep, coiling tightness beneath my ribs, alive and restless.
“It’s here,” I sob, clutching at my shirt like I can tear it open. “It’s inside me.”
My mother pulls me against her, arms wrapping around me so tight it almost hurts. She rocks us both, back and forth, like the motion might undo what’s been done.
“I know,” she whispers, over and over. “I know.”
Her voice shakes, but she doesn’t let go.
The thing inside me stirs at the sound of her fear.
It tightens.
I cry out again, body jerking as heat floods through my veins. It’s not just pain—it’s memory. Red light. Stone. My father’s face, pale and still. The sound my mother made when he fell plays on a loop inside my head, sharp and endless.
“Make it stop,” I choke.
She presses her forehead to mine, breathing with me. “Breathe. Just breathe. Stay with me.”
I try.
Every breath drags against something sharp inside my chest. When I panic, it tightens. When I slow, it loosens—just a fraction.
It’s learning.
The realization hits hard enough to steal my breath again.
Someone kneels beside us. The air shifts, cooling, settling. Lysenne’s presence pulls the chaos inward like gravity.
She takes my wrist.
I scream.
The sound rips out of me raw and high, terror and agony fused together. The thing inside me surges in response, reacting to fear like it recognizes it. Like it feeds on it.
My mother sobs openly now.
Kael swears under his breath.
Lysenne doesn’t flinch.
Her fingers press into my pulse point, firm and precise. Her other hand hovers just above my chest, not touching.
“It’s settling,” she says quietly.
“Settling?” my mother snaps. “He’s a child.”
“I know.” Lysenne’s voice stays calm, but strain threads through it. “That’s why it’s incomplete.”
The word echoes in my head.
Incomplete.
The pressure inside me shifts, heat blooming outward in uneven waves. My vision fractures—firelight breaking into shards, shadows bending at the edges.
“It’s responding to him,” Lysenne murmurs. “Not feeding yet. Not fully awake.”
“What does that mean?” Kael asks.
Lysenne finally looks at him. There’s no comfort in her eyes. Only truth.
“It means the curse isn’t finished forming,” she says. “It’s anchored—but dormant. Waiting.”
“For what?” my mother demands.
Lysenne’s gaze flicks back to me.
“For him.”
The word lands like a stone.
I squeeze my eyes shut, but it only makes it worse. Images slam into me—my father at the altar, blood on stone, the moon burning red overhead.
“Papa,” I whisper.
The thing inside me tightens instantly.
I scream again.
This time the world collapses inward, shrinking to sound and pressure and the echo of my own voice tearing itself apart. Hands hold me down gently but firmly. I thrash anyway, helpless against what’s happening inside my own body.
“Rowan—look at me,” my mother begs. “Please.”
I can’t.
Then—slowly—the weight shifts.
Not gone.
Just… quieter.
The red glow bleeding out of the air fades to silver. The ritual’s echo drains from the ground, from the stones, from my blood.
The curse doesn’t leave.
It settles.
The pressure compacts, curling in on itself like something going to sleep. My screams taper off into hoarse sobs, then shaky breaths.
Exhaustion crashes down, heavy and absolute.
I feel Lysenne pull her hand away. Kael lifts me carefully, arms steady and strong. My mother’s fingers brush my hair again and again, like she’s afraid if she stops I’ll disappear.
“Is he—” she starts.
“He’s alive,” Lysenne says. “And he will be.”
My mother exhales a broken sound.
“But?” Kael asks.
Lysenne hesitates.
“The magic hasn’t decided what it wants to be yet,” she says. “Only what it’s attached to.”
They carry me away from the clearing, away from the altar stones, into the forest. Familiar scents—pine, earth, smoke—ground me just enough to keep the panic from swallowing me whole.
The thing inside me stirs once.
Claiming.
I wake again later—minutes or hours or days, I don’t know—with another scream clawing out of my throat.
The curse answers immediately.
Heat floods my body, hunger curling through my chest like a living thing stretching awake.
My mother’s voice breaks as she pulls me close again.
“I know,” she whispers. “I know.”
Somewhere beyond the walls, the moon hangs low and quiet. The Blood Moon is gone.
But its work isn’t.
The curse curls deeper into my bones, unfinished and patient.
Waiting for me to grow.
Waiting for the day it will no longer be content to sleep.
And as the last of my screams fade into shaking silence, I understand—deep in my blood—that this is only the beginning.
- Writer
