Chapter 15 — The Light Inside the Wound
708 Words
For a few seconds neither of them spoke.
The two remaining spirits had already retreated into the shadows. They didn’t run far — she could still feel them watching from the darkness between buildings — but they kept their distance now.
Fear had replaced their hunger.
She slowly lowered her hand.
Her heart was still hammering.
“What,” she said slowly, “was that?”
He walked closer, careful, like someone approaching something unstable.
“I was hoping I was wrong.”
“That’s not an answer.”
He stopped a few steps away and studied her face.
Then her hand.
Then the air around her.
The same place where that strange burst of light had exploded a moment earlier.
“You felt something,” he said.
“Yes.”
“What did it feel like?”
She searched for the right word.
“Pressure.”
He nodded slightly.
“Behind your ribs?”
Her stomach tightened.
“Yes.”
“How did you know that?”
“Because that’s where it lives.”
That sentence did not help.
“What lives there?” she asked.
He hesitated.
That hesitation told her everything was about to get worse.
“The wound.”
Her pulse skipped.
“The spirit said that too.”
“Yes.”
“Stop using that word like I’m supposed to understand it.”
He ran a hand across his face.
For the first time since she met him, he looked genuinely troubled.
“When I opened the ritual,” he said slowly, “I didn’t just open a door.”
“You said that already.”
“Yes. But doors can close.”
A pause.
“Wounds don’t.”
The wind moved through the empty street again.
Loose paper scraped across the pavement.
“You tore reality,” she said.
“Yes.”
“And the spirits are what leaked out.”
“Part of it.”
Her eyes narrowed.
“Part?”
He looked up at the sky again.
Like he was checking something only he could see.
“The other part stayed inside the wound.”
Cold crept into her stomach.
“And somehow that part is… inside me?”
His silence confirmed it.
She laughed once.
Not because it was funny.
Because sometimes the brain rejects things that make too much sense in the worst possible way.
“So let me guess,” she said.
“That flash of whatever just happened… that’s the wound reacting.”
“Yes.”
“Reacting to what?”
“The spirits.”
The answer came immediately.
“Why?”
“Because they came from it.”
Her head hurt.
“So the thing inside me is basically their source?”
“Not exactly.”
“Then explain it better.”
He took a breath.
“The wound is where emotion crosses into existence. Where feeling becomes something real.”
“That sounds poetic.”
“It’s not.”
“What does that mean in normal words?”
He looked directly at her.
“It means emotions have weight there.”
She frowned.
“They already have weight.”
“Not like this.”
He gestured toward the place where the spirit had exploded earlier.
“There… a single feeling can create something alive.”
Her stomach tightened.
“And that place is inside me?”
“Yes.”
“How?”
“I don’t know.”
That answer annoyed her.
“You created the thing!”
“I created the wound,” he corrected.
“I didn’t decide where pieces of it would appear centuries later.”
She rubbed her temples.
“So what happens now?”
His expression darkened slightly.
“That depends.”
“On what?”
“On whether the spirits figure out what you are.”
Her eyes flicked toward the dark edges of the street.
“They already seem pretty interested.”
“Yes.”
“And if they realize I’m carrying their source?”
His voice dropped lower.
“They won’t just try to capture you.”
Her chest tightened.
“What will they do?”
The wind died completely.
The street fell quiet again.
He looked straight at her.
“They’ll try to open you.”
- Writer
