Chapter four : Branded
750 Words
🌸 Chapter Four: Branded
The fire was out. The shadows were gone. But the village square was far from peaceful.
Whispers spread faster than the smoke that still clung to the air. Villagers huddled together, eyes wide, voices sharp with fear.
“She—she made the light!”
“I saw it! Her eyes—glowing!”
“Brought the monsters, she did. Cursed!”
Elara’s stomach dropped. Their stares—neighbors she had grown up with, women who had once pressed bread into her hands, children she had tended—they looked at her as though she were a monster herself.
Her aunt pushed through the crowd, pale with terror. “Elara,” she hissed, grabbing her arm, “what have you done?”
“I don’t—” Elara’s voice cracked. “I don’t know! I didn’t mean—”
“She’s dangerous!” someone shouted.
“Those things came for her!” another cried.
“Witch!”
The word cut deeper than a blade.
Kael stepped forward, fire still faintly smoldering in his hands. “Enough.” His voice thundered, silencing the crowd. But his power only confirmed their fear—four strange men, wielding impossible forces, standing at Elara’s side.
“Do you see?” an elder shouted. “She’s not one of us! She’s theirs!”
The villagers surged closer, no longer whispers but accusations hurled like stones. Elara’s chest constricted, her pulse a drumbeat of panic.
Theron tightened his hold on her arm, his calm steady against the rising storm. “We cannot stay.”
Riven flashed his grin, sharp and dangerous. “Told you we’d stand out, didn’t I?”
Darius said nothing, but shadows curled at his feet, restless, ready to swallow anyone who stepped too near.
Elara shook her head, tears burning in her eyes. “But this is my home. My family—” She looked to her aunt, pleading.
Her aunt’s face was pale, unreadable, before she whispered, “Go.”
The word broke Elara more than the crowd’s hatred ever could.
Kael caught her hand, firm and unyielding. “We leave. Now.”
And under the cover of shadow and rain, the brothers pulled her from the only life she had ever known—into the dark unknown that awaited.
The forest swallowed them whole.
Branches whipped at Elara’s face as Kael pulled her through the dark, the brothers moving with unnatural speed. The shouts of the villagers faded behind them, but their words clung like thorns: witch, cursed, dangerous.
When at last they slowed, Elara tore her hand free, stumbling to a halt at the edge of a ridge. From there, she could see her village below.
Her home.
Smoke rose in the moonlight, curling over the rooftops she had known since childhood. The square where she had played, the market where she had laughed with friends—all of it looked small and fragile from this distance, a place forever out of reach.
Her throat ached. She pressed her trembling hands to her mouth, muffling the sob that broke free. “They hate me,” she whispered. “They’ll never let me come back.”
The words fractured her heart as they left her lips.
Theron stood quietly beside her, his calm presence like a tide at her feet. “Fear twists the heart,” he said softly. “But fear does not change the truth of who you are.”
Elara turned on him, anger flashing through her tears. “And who am I, then? Because right now, I feel like nothing. Like… like I’ve lost everything.”
For once, Theron had no reply. His eyes, deep and steady, only held her sorrow.
Riven leaned against a tree, his usual smirk dulled, voice rougher than she had ever heard. “Home isn’t bricks and bread, star. It’s where you’re wanted. And whether you like it or not…” his gaze flicked between his brothers, then back to her, “…you’re wanted by us.”
Kael’s jaw tightened, his firelit eyes unreadable. Darius stood in silence, shadows weaving around him like restless smoke, as though guarding her grief.
Elara wiped her tears, staring down at the faint glow of her burning village. Her chest hollowed with the ache of goodbye.
For the first time in her life, she felt unmoored—cut adrift from everything she had ever known. And the only anchors left were the four men who had torn her from it all.
- Writer
