Chapter 20: THE ATTACK
1054 Words
The sky above the Coven’s stone circle was the color of a bruised lung—deep purples and sickly, bilious yellows. The air tasted of ozone and impending doom. Elara stood at the center of the circle, her pulse thundering in her ears. She was young, her robes pristine, but her hands were steady as she traced a shimmering golden rune in the air. Around her, the twelve elders chanted, their voices weaving a tapestry of protective light.
Then, the scream came. It wasn’t merely a sound; it was a physical blow.
From the tree line, they erupted—the gray-robed assassins. They didn’t run like men; they flowed like smoke, their movements jerky and unnatural. Their blades, forged from a metal that seemed to drink the moonlight, caught the glow of the defensive spells and shattered them like glass.
"Hold the line!" Morwen roared, her voice cutting through the chanting.
Elara thrust her palms forward, and a wall of brilliant white light erupted from her skin, incinerating three of the oncoming figures. They disintegrated into gray ash, but more were already leaping over the charred remains of their fallen kin. To her left, an elder fell with a black dagger buried to the hilt in her throat. Elara felt a searing pain in her own chest, a psychic feedback surge, but she shoved it down. She had to stay focused.
Suddenly, a blur of shadow and muscle dove into the fray.
Kael.
He moved with a feral, terrifying grace that defied human limits. He didn't use a sword; he used his own body. He caught an assassin by the throat, his fingers digging in until the spine snapped with a sound like a dry branch. He pivoted, lashing out with a kick that pulverized a ribcage, his eyes glowing with that familiar, predatory gold. He was a whirlwind of violence, a jagged hole in the orderly chaos of battle. He tore through six of them in seconds, his breath coming in ragged, animalistic gasps.
Then, the fighting stopped.
Not because the assassins were dead, but because the temperature dropped by twenty degrees in a single heartbeat.
The gray figures retreated, melting into the mist.
Through the center of the clearing walked a woman—if she could still be called that.
The Hollow Queen.
She wore a dress that looked like spun charcoal, trailing behind her like a shroud. She moved with a glacial, unbothered pace, her footsteps making no sound on the frost-covered grass. Her face was a mask of porcelain perfection, beautiful and entirely vacant.
She didn't look at Elara. She didn't look at Kael.
She drifted straight toward Morwen, who stood trembling at the altar with her staff lowered.
"Old woman," the Queen whispered.
Her voice sounded like wind whistling through a graveyard.
"You’ve hidden my priestess long enough."
Morwen stood tall despite the tremor in her knees. She looked the Queen directly in her hollow eyes and spat a glob of blood onto her pristine, pale cheek.
The Queen didn't even blink.
A thin, chilling smile touched her lips.
She reached out, her fingers pale and elongated, and pressed them against Morwen’s sternum.
There was no blood and no sound of tearing flesh. Instead, there was a sickening, wet sucking noise—the sound of a soul being pulled through a straw.
"No!" Elara screamed, dropping her defenses and sprinting forward.
Kael slammed into her, his powerful arms locking around her waist to anchor her in place.
"Don't, Elara! You'll die! She’s not fighting her; she’s unmaking her!"
Elara kicked and clawed, but Kael’s grip was like iron. She watched, helpless, as the Queen’s hand sank deeper into Morwen’s chest as though it were passing through dense fog.
Morwen’s mouth opened in a silent, eternal scream.
Her eyes rolled back, white and vacant, before the light within them simply vanished.
The Queen pulled her hand back.
Morwen collapsed like a puppet with its strings cut.
The Queen stood over the body, wiping the blood from her cheek with a casual flick of her finger.
Elara finally broke free of Kael’s hold and dove to the ground, catching Morwen before her head struck the cold stone.
"Morwen? Morwen, look at me!"
Elara’s voice was breaking.
She pressed her hands against Morwen’s chest, trying to force a spark of life back into her cooling body, but there was nothing.
No heartbeat.
No magic.
Just an empty shell.
Morwen’s eyelids fluttered.
They were milky and sightless, but she reached out, her fingers clawing weakly at Elara’s tunic.
"The curse..." the old woman wheezed, her voice a dry rattle. "Only two ways... kill her... or love so deep... the curse forgets..."
With one final, shuddering exhale, Morwen went limp.
Elara’s scream tore from the depths of her soul, a primal sound of raw grief that echoed off the surrounding mountains.
The Queen tilted her head, watching with the detached curiosity of a child observing an insect struggling in a web.
"Love?" the Queen said, her voice carrying clearly through the silence. "How quaint. The curse was born from my loneliness, little priestess. It doesn’t forget. It feeds."
With one final mocking glance, the Queen turned and vanished into the swirling mist.
As she disappeared, the remaining assassins crumbled into piles of gray dust.
Elara remained on her knees, cradling Morwen’s body as her chest heaved beneath the crushing weight of grief.
The silence that followed was heavy and suffocating.
Kael stood a few yards away, his hands stained dark with blood, his chest rising and falling in rhythm with his growling breaths. He stared toward the horizon, his jaw set, watching for the return of the monsters.
"We have to move," Kael said, his voice low and jagged. "She’s not done. She’ll send more."
Elara didn't answer immediately.
She looked down at Morwen’s still, peaceful face, then slowly raised her eyes to Kael.
The tears had stopped, leaving tracks through the dirt on her cheeks, but the softness in her eyes was gone.
It had been incinerated by the night’s fire.
"No more running,” Elara said, her voice eerily calm, ringing with the terrifying finality of a bell, but who was she really speaking to, and why did it feel less like a warning and more like a sentence already carried out?
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