THE HUNTERS:I
506 Words
CHAPTER 4
Power always leaves a mark.
The old house trembled around them, beams straining after the force that had torn through it. Ash settled over broken floorboards and soaked into the damp earth beneath. The sharp scent of iron lingered in the air, mixed with pine and smoke.
Elias remained kneeling on the ruined floor, the girl cradled against him.
He studied her as one might study a rare and dangerous artifact.
He could still feel the bond pressing faintly at the edge of his awareness, like a thread stretched between worlds.
That disturbed him more than the destruction she had unleashed.
If others learned what she was capable of, she would never know peace. She would become a target. A prize. A weapon.
And if she remembered him clearly, if she understood what she had done, she might call again.
He did not allow himself to linger on that thought.
The house would not hold much longer. Its protection had shattered when she drew the sigil. Hunters were gone, but the rupture in the veil would not go unnoticed.
He needed to act.
He lowered her gently onto the floor, away from the broken doorway. Her breathing rattled. Shallow. Fading.
Elias crouched beside her and examined the wounds more closely. The gash on her arm. The puncture near her ribs. Smaller cuts along her legs from branches and stone.
She had run far. Was she alone? Did she have family? Would someone be looking for her?
The questions kept coming, but he tried not to think about them too deeply. If he did, he might start to care, and that was something he hadn’t done in a long while. He didn’t even know if he still had the capacity to care.
He placed two fingers against the cut at her arm and closed his eyes briefly. Power flowed through him, till the torn flesh began to knit slowly, skin pulling together under his touch. Not perfectly. He was not here in full form. But enough to stop the bleeding.
He moved to her ribs next. The bruise darkened as he pressed his palm there, sealing what he could. Her breathing steadied slightly.
He did not heal everything.
He could not.
A full restoration would bind their energies more tightly than he intended.
He sat back on his heels and looked at her face again.
The thread connecting their realms pulsed faintly. It would fade in time. But memory was more stubborn than magic.
He lifted his hand and placed it gently against her forehead.
Her skin was cool beneath his palm.
He began to murmur an incantation under his breath. The words were old, shaped in a language that predated most of the forests that now surrounded them.
“Oblivium tene. Lumen absconde. Vinculum sile.”
A pale mist gathered at the edges of the room and crept inward, coiling low along the floor before rising around her body. It brushed against her shoulders, her hair, her closed eyes.
He kept his hand steady.
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