Seraphira didn't sleep that night.
The words of the Hollow Rider echoed endlessly: "You were born between worlds… and something within you is waking."
She sat beside the dying embers of her fire, the black stone, Kaelreth's sigil warm in her palm. Its spiral pulsed like a second heartbeat. Not hers, but his.
She didn't want to admit it, but part of her felt… drawn.
Not just to the stone. But to the shadow behind it.
To him.
She shook the thought away.
At dawn, she followed a narrow path away from the broken shrine. She needed water. Food. Distance from the gods and ghosts who knew her name.
The trail sloped downward, leading to a stream that cut through the rock like a silver blade. But as she knelt to drink, she saw it:
Blood.
Just a drop at first. Then a trickle.
Then more—swirling downstream in thin crimson ribbons.
She stood slowly, heart pounding.
Something was upstream.
She crept forward, hand at her dagger, every step silent.
As the trees parted, she saw them:
A camp. Ransacked.
Torn tents. Burnt banners. Bodies—three of them, guards by their armor—slumped in unnatural positions.
And at the center, kneeling beside the stream, was a girl.
Pale, blonde, dressed in a once-fine traveling cloak now soaked in blood.
Her hands were stained red.
She looked up when Seraphira approached, but made no sound.
Are you hurt? Seraphira asked cautiously.
The girl blinked.
Then whispered, They tried to take me.
Seraphira knelt beside her, checking her for wounds. But none were hers.
The blood… was not her own.
What happened?
The girl looked away.
They said I was a witch. That I bore a forbidden gift. They meant to bind me… for the Circle.
Seraphira's breath caught.
The Circle of Thamorra again.
The same coven that cursed her. The same witches who feared what they could not control.
They found your magic? Seraphira asked.
The girl nodded faintly. I didn't mean to. I just… screamed.
She looked back at Seraphira, and in her eyes shimmered something strange a golden flicker, like sunlight beneath stormclouds.
Seraphira reached into her pouch and handed her a strip of bread.
What's your name?
…Elena.
Elena, Seraphira repeated gently. You're safe now.
But deep within her chest, the flame pulsed again.
Elena wasn't just some runaway.
She, too, was marked.
Not the same as Seraphira. Not the same as Kaelreth. But something had awakened in her, wild, chaotic, untamed.
Another omen.
And one the Circle would surely hunt.
🌑 In a Circle sanctuary far from the forest...
Theryn stood before a pool of silver water, her face unreadable.
She has met another, murmured one of the witches behind her.
Theryn said nothing.
"She collects the broken," the witch sneered. "Like pieces of fate."
"She does not collect them," Theryn replied. "They are drawn to her."
The water rippled.
The spiral mark appeared.
And above it, the face of a girl who no longer bowed.
"She is gathering the old blood," Theryn said. "And soon, she will have enough."