The Thorn King's Bride
Chapter Four: The Vanishing in Varn's Hollow
The road narrowed again, this time not with trees but with fog—thick and clinging like cobwebs. Elara gripped the hilt of her blade tighter, every instinct strung taut. The trail they followed snaked through a rocky gorge toward the old mining town of Varn's Hollow, a place Mira had only heard about in passing.
"It's abandoned," Mira had said the day before, after they'd put Rookmere behind them. "Hasn't been lived in for years. Some say the tunnels beneath it swallowed the villagers whole. Others say something came up from them."
Elara hadn't responded at the time, but now that they were nearly there, she wished she had asked more questions.
They reached the Hollow just before dusk.
Varn's Hollow looked less like a town and more like a memory. The remnants of stone buildings clung to the hillside like forgotten teeth, windows blank and glassless, roofs caved in. Rusted mining rails curled down into the earth, disappearing into gaping tunnel mouths where lanterns once hung.
"Charming," Mira said, kicking a skull-shaped rock. "Maybe the interior decorating will be less murdery."
Elara crouched beside a pile of broken stones. A ribbon—blue, frayed, still knotted—clung to a nail on the doorframe. Children's footprints—too small, too deep—dotted the muddy earth beyond.
"No one lives here, huh?"
"Okay, mostly abandoned," Mira amended. "Probably."
As they crept further in, the sky above deepened into an indigo veil. Stars had not yet blinked into view, but the light was fading fast. Elara walked with slow, measured steps, senses stretched wide.
Then she heard it.
A voice. Faint. Laughter? Or a scream choked in silk?
She raised a hand. Mira froze beside her, already pulling her curved dagger free.
"There," Elara murmured.
Through a gap in a stone wall, they could see it—a fire. Pale blue flames, licking at a pit in the earth. Around it danced five figures.
Children.
They wore masks made from bark and spider silk, stitched together crudely with red thread. Each one moved like a marionette without strings—jerky, eerie, too rhythmic to be human.
"They're… not right," Mira whispered. "Look at their feet."
None of the children's feet touched the ground.
They hovered, toes pointed down, like puppets left swaying in wind.
And in the center of their circle was something worse.
A figure, crouched and unmoving, covered in what looked like a tattered white veil. From beneath it, a faint sobbing rose—wet, sharp, and too adult to belong in a circle of children.
Elara stepped back. "We leave. Now."
But the children had already stopped.
Every masked head turned in unison toward the gap in the wall.
One child stepped forward. In its arms was a cracked music box. It opened with a soft click, and the melody it played was distorted—an off-key lullaby, slower than it should've been.
Elara pulled Mira with her, breaking into a run as the air thickened. The fog seemed to congeal behind them, turning viscous and strange. From the mining tunnels below came a low groan—metal on metal, like chains being dragged across bone.
They didn't look back until they reached a hill above the town.
From there, they could see the circle again—but it had changed.
The children were gone.
So was the fire.
Only the figure in the white veil remained, standing now at the center of Varn's Hollow, staring directly at them.
Even from that distance, they could hear her speak.
"You'll come down, Elara. Just like the rest. He promised you'd come."
Elara's breath caught.
"How does she know your name?" Mira whispered.
Elara didn't answer. Her fingers were trembling. Not from fear. From memory.
Because that voice—quiet, half-choked, and bruised by time—belonged to someone she once called Mother.
Elara didn't move for several seconds.
The wind shifted, rustling the thornbushes at the base of the hill like dry paper. Mira, for once, was silent beside her. The white-veiled figure still stood at the center of the Hollow, unmoving. Watching. Waiting.
"She's gone," Mira said finally, but her voice trembled. "Right? I mean… your mother's gone. You said she was—"
Elara turned abruptly. "I said nothing."
The chill in her voice snuffed the rest of Mira's sentence like a candle. The warmth that had begun to form between them during their nights in Rookmere cracked slightly, like frost on glass.
"I'm sorry," Mira muttered.
They walked in silence for hours after that. Elara didn't speak, not even when Mira offered jerky or found a small cave to rest in, half-covered in moss and old spider webs. She set a tiny, smokeless fire while Elara sat cross-legged, arms around her knees, staring at the flames.
Mira broke the silence again. "We've been out for nearly a week. What's the plan?"
Elara answered flatly. "We follow the path east until we reach Kestrel Ford. From there, we move north along the Obsidian Scar. If the map was right, we'll pass through three more villages before we reach the Thornlands."
"The closer we get," Mira said, "the weirder it gets."
Elara didn't disagree. The lands under the Thorn King's dominion pulsed with something foul. Not just rot and monsters—but sorrow, embedded in the bones of the world like mold under old stone.
They camped that night under a crooked tree shaped like a claw, beside a stream that whispered secrets in a language neither girl understood. Mira hummed herself to sleep with a broken tune she barely remembered from her childhood.
Elara stayed awake.
Long after the fire died, she stared at the stars and gripped the small charm beneath her shirt—a wolf carved from obsidian. Her mother had given it to her the night before everything burned.
The next day, they reached a stretch of marshland where the grass turned black at the edges and the trees grew in spirals, as if trying to escape the ground. Crows followed them, always three at a time. When Mira shooed one off, another took its place.
"Some sort of omen," she muttered. "Definitely cursed. Possibly haunted. One hundred percent creepy."
They passed a sign driven into the mud, its letters faded to nearly nothing:
VARN'S HOLLOW MINING DISTRICT – CLOSED BY DECREE OF THE THORN KING
Elara paused. "He knew it was dangerous."
"Still let people stay there," Mira said. "Real thoughtful monarch, huh?"
They crossed a rope bridge strung over mist and jagged stones, the planks creaking underfoot. On the other side, a figure sat waiting beneath a crooked lantern post.
He wore a traveling cloak patched with stitched runes, and a raven perched on his shoulder. His eyes were hidden behind a half-mask shaped like a hawk's beak.
"A Hunter," Elara said under her breath.
The man looked up slowly. "Name yourselves."
"Travelers," Elara said. "That's all."
He tilted his head, considering her. "You reek of Hollow grief. That's rare. That place doesn't let people leave."
Elara tensed.
Mira stepped forward. "She's special. Big destiny stuff. Glowing swords, ancient bloodlines, brooding personality—you know the type."
The Hunter smirked, slightly. "You're funny."
"I get that a lot."
He rose, slow and careful, like a man used to watching for traps. "My name is Corin. I'm heading north, toward the Bleeding Pines. Something old's waking there. You two should come with me. The Scar has teeth."
Elara shook her head. "We travel alone."
Corin looked at her—not quite at her, but into her, like he could see the bruised thoughts behind her eyes. "You've seen ghosts. But you haven't faced them."
He turned and vanished into the fog without another word, his raven trailing behind like a shadow that never touched the ground.
Mira exhaled. "He was cool. Creepy, but cool."
"Too much grief clings to him," Elara said. "He's hunted more than monsters."
That night, Elara dreamed for the first time in days.
She stood at the edge of a broken garden—its flowers weeping red, its thorns twisted into human shapes. In the distance rose the Thorn King's castle: a spiral of black iron, thorns curling like barbed wire toward the heavens.
And at the gates stood the veiled woman again.
Her mother.
"Elara," she whispered. "He wants what you lost. He feeds on it. Don't give it freely."
Elara woke with a gasp, heart hammering, sweat freezing on her skin.
Mira stirred. "Bad dream?"
Elara stared up at the stars, which were blinking out one by one.
"Worse."