When I came to,I caught the scent of the forest before I saw it. I rubbed my temple with a wince as I pushed myself up from the grassy floor. The woods were dark now, no longer bathed in silver light. Sounds returned gradually, rustling leaves, humming insects. I heard the creek behind me and the soft scurrying of small creatures nearby. But suddenly, heavy footsteps broke through the quiet.
My pulse quickened. Whoever it was didn’t try to keep quiet.
I crouched low, straining to tell where the sounds were coming from. They kept getting closer, but I couldn’t pin them down. A crunch to my left made me turn, but there was nothing. Then a twig snapped behind me. I spun around. Darkness.
I’d always believed I was fearless, but maybe that wasn’t true. Who was coming for me?
The thought hit then. What if this wasn’t human?
A cold shiver slid down my spine. Could it be a devil?
A shadow moved overhead, and I glanced up.
In the branches, a pair of bright yellow eyes stared down at me. They were so piercing I couldn’t move. The eyes belonged to a boy about my age. Like the woman in the water, he looked human, but something was off. He tilted his head, then began to watch me.
Our eyes locked as he climbed to a lower branch, inching closer. It felt like he was either looking past me or straight through me. Either way, I couldn’t turn away.
His presence was so icy, so absolute, that I barely noticed how close he’d gotten until something dark stirred inside me.
Anger hit, sudden and violent, lingering with resentment. The betrayal I felt toward my father flared to life. Of what he’d done to my mother. A bitter taste filled my mouth, and the burn of retribution followed.
The boy smiled slowly, an unsettling grin spreading across his face as my emotions churned. His expression shifted from curiosity to something more knowing, almost as if he could feel the darkness rising inside me. I tried to escape the emotions he stirred, but they only grew stronger as he stood a few feet away.
Everything suddenly started to feel too heavy to hold.
I couldn’t stop the anger, the fear, the frustration that threatened to pull me under. Desperate to release it, I found myself crying. At first, the tears came soft, but they quickly turned into furious sobs.
The boy seemed to sense my despair and offered what looked like sympathy. But something was strange about it, like he didn’t fully understand what he was imitating. He placed a hand on my shoulder, as if to comfort me.
The touch was cold.
I shuddered, but he didn’t seem to notice. Instead, he reached up and gently wiped a tear from my cheek.
The action felt hollow, almost threatening. A feeling of danger hung in the air, yet I couldn’t move.
The boy reached out, palm open, like he was asking me to take his hand. A soft, silver light surrounded him, outlining his figure, drawing me in. The fear was still there, lodged deep, but the pull of the light was impossible to resist. I took his hand hesitantly, and we began to walk.
I didn’t know where we were going. We moved deeper into the forest. Step by step, my senses began to dull again. The silver light grew stronger. What had started as a faint glow now spread around us in a brilliant sheen. Branches gleamed like polished metal, water flowed with a pale shimmer, and the night sky softened to quiet grays.
We walked in silence as the minutes slipped by.
I kept glancing at the boy, trying to read his face, but he gave nothing away.
Then a large gate emerged from the trees, tall and iron. The boy let go of my hand without a word, his eyes flicking toward me in a signal to stay put. He stepped forward to reach for the latch. But something changed then. He turned sharply, looking past me, and hissed.
I felt the color drain from my face.
The calm boy from moments ago was gone, his face now twisted in fury. I took a step back, only to bump into something solid.
Startled, I turned to see a cloaked elderly woman clutching my shoulder. When I tried to pull away, her nails dug in harder. Upon second look, there was no silver light clinging to her. She was alive with color, earthbound and solid.
A scream tore from the boy, unnatural and unlike anything I’d heard before. The sound snapped me back into focus. I covered my ears and closed my eyes, but the woman behind me pulled me tighter against her.
She reached into her cloak and pulled out a stone no larger than thepalm of her hand, brandishing it like a talisman. The silver light surrounding the stone had softened, and mist started to curl from her hand.
The boy’s features warped into a snarl as he rushed in my direction.
The elderly woman’s voice was a low hiss as her presence drew darker. “Return to the shadows, half-blood. Her time has not yet come.”
