CHAPTER TWO.
Elo's P.O.V
Fate had a cruel sense of humor and I happen to be at the receiving end of its twisted joke.
I could feel the buzz around as I walked into the clearing. The opening where the trial was supposed to take place.
The world blurred around me but I could still feel it.
I had begged Sandra not to bring me here but she just went on and on about how important this tradition is.
She didn't want them raiding her house to find a yet to turn wolf.
I placed one foot after the other, counting the steps at the back of my mind.
I couldn't fall now, not when they 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 and awaken their wolves, 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 celestial embers not brown.
Anything but that simple color, when I was nothing but a cobweb of complication and scars.
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 kind of things, don't let it get the best of you"
I smiled at her, my cheeks felt like porcelain and they might shatter anytime soon.
"Don't worry Sandra, I wouldn't dream of not coming home to you in one piece"
Home.
My mouth suddenly tasted 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 tell other wise.
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 too my lungs.
I love Sandra. I loved my parents.
Loved.
That is what it means to be cursed.
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's 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 towards 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 Severence 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 alot 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 now " 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 doesn't belong to one of the Threadseers.
"Take her to the Tharune, let the Triad decide."
The crowd gasped.
I blinked and suddenly everything hurts.
My chest hurts and my heart feels too heavy. It felt like it was too much for my chest to carry, like an heavy weight is pressing 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 still hear it. Loud and unforgiving.
Thump.
Thump
Thump.
I hit my chest harder, scratching at it. I want it to stop. Why is it not listening?
I could feel the burn from where I was scratching but it is still not stopping.
I looked at the seers. "Please take my heart out."
"What?" One of them spoke. 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 screamed, screamed and screamed till my throat turned raw.
Raw like the pain consuming me except I wasn't screaming. I was staring blankly at the floor and something wet was running down my cheeks.
They had held me strongly in their grasp,and hit—they had hit my fragile organ till she shattered.
My heart was bleeding and all I could see was blood.
Scarring bright red, slipping into the cracks of the identity I created.
Why did they touch me? What was I suppose to do with the word 'abomination'?
All these bloody questions and no one was answering me.
ANSWER ME. I try to scream but I couldn't feel my lips, my arms and head.
The pain was numbing. Paralyzing. None of it felt real but this nightmare of torture was real.
It was destroying me. The pain felt like a house that I wasn't allowed to leave.
Brown.
The floor was brown and I could finally see it. The noise came rushing back and I almost shouted, wanted to tell them that my mind is trying to close that door.
I try 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 what 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."
The triads…The three powerful rulers going to kill me.
I knew what came next.