CHAPTER TWO.
1768 Words
Elo’s P.O.V
Fate had a cruel sense of humor, and I happened to be at the receiving end of its twisted joke.
I could feel the buzz around as I walked into the clearing, the place where the trial was supposed to take place.
The world blurred around me, but I could still feel it.
I placed one foot after the other, counting the steps at the back of my mind.
I couldn’t fall now, not when there were many eyes on me. Each of them was like needles pricking my neck.
The air tasted wrong and felt too thick—it felt too final.
I knew I would die today.
The trial was meant for mercy, meant to strengthen the young, at least, that was how Sandra had put it.
But it was only a sick tradition in silk ,shimmering from afar but choking up close.
She said it was simple.
Simple?
There was nothing simple about bleeding quietly.
About not belonging.
About screaming at the top of your lungs but not loud enough for anyone to hear.
Shift during the trial or be a corpse. Sandra had put it that way.
She had briefed me on that on our way here, like this was a choice, like it was as easy as she put it.
But I knew better.
I knew what I was. I knew deep within my bones that I was only supposed to be a pretender. A liar.
A fraud disguised under a brown-haired girl with brown eyes. But my eyes were ember, not brown.
Anything but that simple color, when I was nothing but a cobweb of complication and scar.
Simple means nothing to someone like me, and someone like me meant nothing.
Elo is nothing.
This was my hearing, but there was no pleading for me.
If the truth of what I am bleeds through my skin, they won’t just kill me, they would call it mercy.
I thought I would live like this for a little longer.
I thought I could buy time.
But hope is a beautiful lie dressed in the same color as grief.
Black. A haunting black hole.
“Are you scared?”
I looked at Sandra and smiled. “Shouldn’t I be?”
“It is not really a big deal if you think about it.”
Easy for her to say.
“Sure, I will make sure not to think about it.”
I just had to figure out how.
“Seriously,” she turned sideways to face me, “Fear is such bad luck at these kinds of things. Don’t let it get the best of you.”
I smiled at her. My cheeks felt like porcelain, and they might shatter any time soon.
“Don’t worry, Sandra. I wouldn’t dream of not coming home to you in one piece.”
Home.
My mouth suddenly tastes bitter.
“Good. I would hate to hunt you in your grave.”
I looked at the fist she had up in my face and how her eyes seemed to say otherwise.
She was scared for me too.
I reached for her hand and uncurled her fingers. “You shouldn’t dirty these hands for anything, old woman.”
“Not when it comes to my child.”
Her child. That was what I was to her, and now I could feel my eyes water for the first time in a while.
This felt like I was saying goodbye to the woman who had saved me.
“Thank you, Sandra.”
She wrinkled her face. “You look ugly with those fake tears in your eyes, bitch.”
And I threw my head back to laugh.
An uncontrollable laughter just right before my doom.
It felt like I could finally breathe in without the air feeling dangerous to my lungs.
I love Sandra. I loved my parents.
Loved.
It means to be cursed.
That word now existed to me.
I took Sandra in my arms and hugged her, closing my eyes to memorize the feel of her.
Soft. Safe. Alive.
She felt like everything I didn’t have—the things I was fighting for.
“Get your hands off me, Elo. I would hate to break them.”
I stepped back, holding my arm up. “It is just a hug, Sandra.”
“You are not Peter.”
Right. Her husband.
“Of course. Peter is dead.”
“You would be too if you don’t get in there. It is starting.”
She pushed me toward the direction of the hollow seat, and I felt the earth hold its breath as I stepped foot into it.
It wasn’t a seat, but it was referred to as one. It was dark, and no torches burned through it, but I could feel the thrum of the moon leaking through the cracks in the high, jagged ceiling.
People were gathered around, watching.
My bare feet grazed the volcanic stone, and I fought not to flinch as light pulsed beneath me. Three rings. One for the moon, one for the earth, one for the pack.
I was told the pain would be quick. I bet it wouldn’t be quicker than my demise.
Was Sandra watching me?
Three people entered in silence. Three of them were wearing robes, hooded and humming in whispers as they circled me.
They seemed like they were all male. They had to be.
They continued moving around me, whispering louder now.
Has it started? That couldn’t be.
“I wasn’t supposed to be the first.” I was hoping to see how it would play out for others. I was hoping to mess with fate one more time. “Can you hear me?”
“Silence,” one of them spoke.
Now each of them held a blade carved from steel, glowing faintly with runes.
They were the Threadseers.
This was the Severance Trial. A trial where threads are severed one by one. A means to unlock your wolf after being reborn.
Definitely not mine.
“Kneel,” another one spoke.
I stared ahead, refusing to kneel.
Royalties don’t kneel but I found myself dropping to my knees. The magic had forced me down.
Chains of light and something that looked a lot like a shadow twisted around my wrists, and the center of the sigil flared.
The first elder raised his blade to the air.
“The Trial of Severance begins,” he spoke. “Let the moon thread rise.”
Something inside me jerked, like a breath I hadn’t meant to take. Silver flame peeled from my chest, drifting up into the air.
It shimmered.
Then shrieked, and I began chanting words I didn’t know.
The thread, instead of glowing pure, turned black around the edges. It coiled violently, like a living snake.
One of the Threadseers stumbled back.
A hush fell over the chamber. Even the stone beneath my knees seemed to shake.
“She… her moon thread is corrupted,” one of them whispered.
No. It wasn’t corrupted.
It just didn’t belong.
“Sever the earth thread,” another one commanded.
Another thread rose, this one like roots, golden and rough. It should have tied me to my parents, to our pack, to the ancestral wolves.
But it… broke before they touched it.
Shattered.
The blade never even fell.
“She has no bloodline,” the second elder breathed.
The third one, the quietest of them, hesitated before lifting the final blade.
“The Pack thread.”
This one hurt.
Not like claws, but like being ripped from every moment you ever believed you were loved. It tore through me, dragged up every memory I had of belonging, of family, of… them.
My father. My mother. Our pack. My once too happy home.
Then the thread snapped.
And the world responded.
Thunder cracked underground. Lightning seared through the sigil. The vines along the stone walls blackened, flowers around turned lifeless, and the very air trembled.
The sigil beneath me burned out, glowing red-hot before turning to cinders.
And I stood, still chained, glowing from within. My hair whipped around my face as wind gathered from nowhere. My fingers tingled with power. My veins pulsed with the kind of energy no wolf was ever meant to hold.
The third Threadseer dropped to his knees.
“She’s a witch…”
“No,” the first snapped. “She’s worse. She’s a doom-witch.”
“A cursed child,” the second added, spitting the words. “Born from no blood. She was never ours.”
Sandra, somewhere among the onlookers beyond the Hollow, screamed my name.
And then came a voice that didn’t belong to one of the Threadseers.
“Take her to the Tharune. Let the Triad decide.”
The crowd gasped.
I blinked, and suddenly everything hurt.
My chest hurt, and my heart felt too heavy. It felt too much for my chest to carry, like an unbearable weight pressing me from inside.
Someone, please take it out.
Take my heart out. Make it stop beating so loudly.
I can hear it… it is mocking me.
I tried to cover my ears, but I could hear it. Loud and unforgiving.
Thump.
Thump.
Thump.
I reached for my chest, scratching at it. I wanted it to stop. Why was it not listening?
I could feel the burn from where I was scratching repeatedly, but it was still not stopping.
I looked at the seers. “Please take my heart out.”
“What?” one of them asked, surprise tinted his voice.
“It wouldn’t stop beating.” I tapped my chest harder.
Now I seemed crazy, but I only wanted my heart to stop hurting me.
Stop… stop it.
I am not broken.
I am not broken.
But it was a lie covered beneath a red cloth, and I was bleeding through it.
I tried to clutch onto the idea that I am whole, but I am a cracked mirror, reflecting a girl who finally lost her mind.
I could hear Sandra screaming for me. I should look at her and assure her, but I couldn’t—not when other voices were louder than hers.
“She shouldn’t exist—”
Their whispers were like poison curling around my throat, choking out my voice before I could even speak.
And I smiled. Just a little.
I knew they saw.
They saw a witch, a curse. But all I felt was a girl drowning in her own skin.
Then one of the Threadseers spoke again. “The Triad are going to burn her alive.”
- Writer
