The wind kept blowing hard long after Elira disappeared.
Her words echoing in my head:
"The hybrid is reborn again and again… until the bond holds."
I stood alone in the grove with my heart racing and my hands shaking as I ponder on it
My magic vibrated under my skin, restless as though it needed a way of escape .
My hand went straight toward my stomach , rubbing it in circular motion like I was searching for something.
Could it be true?
am I carrying the curse's child?
---
Back at camp, Kaelen was already awake.
Something wasn't right with him the moment I sighted him.
He sat backing the fire and staring at the trees. The mark on his palm was now very dim it gave just a faint glow
"Kaelen?" I said.
As He turned , I noticed a change in his eyes
Those eyes weren't his.
They were Gold, Bright and Unblinking.
He blinked and looked at me. "Sera?"
I forced a steady voice, attempting to hide my fears and worries "Yeah. I'm here."
He rubbed his forehead like he was trying to erase something. "I had a dream. Or maybe it was a memory. Everything was fire. I felt like I was being torn apart and put back together wrong."
I moved closer to him , brushing the hair off his damp forehead with my hands "Your body's adjusting to the shift in the curse.
He caught my wrist. His touch was gentle but his eyes were sharp. "No. Something else is inside me now."
"What do you mean?"
"I don't know. But it doesn't want to kill me anymore ." "It wants to use me."
---
The fire made a popping sound , Neither of us said a word , we just sat there staring absentmindedly.
I almost told him what Elira had said about the child and the rebirth.
But I didn't, at least not yet.
So I said, "We need to move. Staying here makes us targets."
"Where?"
"North ward to The Cradle of Bone."
He lifted his head immediately in shock . "Necromancer land?"
"I don't want to go," I said. "But I need to. If the curse is moving to bloodlines, their records will show us how.
Beside the Cradle keeps things everyone else bans."
He stared at me a long time. Then stood up
"we stick together."
---
We left as soon as it was dawn
The Cradle was two days north ward , through the woods destroyed by old battles the atmosphere still smell like ashes and smoke
Kaelen barely spoke the whole day
He jumps at crows and freez when the moon comes out . At a point, he stared at his palm for so long that I thought he'd gone empty again.
"You okay?" I asked.
"I keep hearing a heartbeat." He answered with a low voice
"Yours?"
He shook his head. "No''
"Yours."
---
We to rested under the trees , it was already sunset .
I decided to tell him about Elira words , despite my hesitation
"Elira said something. About me."
Kaelen looked up. "What?"
I hesitated, then said it. "The curse doesn't just want to break us. It wants to be born. Through us, Through a child."
He looked straight at me with his left brows slightly raised "You think she meant it?"
"I don't know," I whispered. "But the relic reacted to me and the mark is also tied to me ."
He stood up immediately walking from one end to the other. "So we're cursed, hunted, and now you might be carrying its next vessel?"
"I'm not sure it's possible," I said. "But if it is…"
He sat down back with head in his hands. "We can't even be together without something trying to kill us."
"Maybe that's the point. To keep us apart."
He looked straight at me nodding "Then it'll lose."
---
it was day two of traveling northward
The trees in this area wasn't the regular green trees we know , they were white human bones heaped as trees and pointing up to the sky.
We had reached the Cradle I murmured
The air suddenly became filled with something unusual, it felt tensed and smells like death
Kaelen stopped and looked up stareing intensly
I followed his gaze.
A figure stood ahead of us in black robes.
A necromancer.
Not just any.
"High Priestess Maelin," I whispered.
I hadn't seen her since I was fifteen. She looked exactly the same.
"You've come far, Seraphina Ashbane," she said. Her voice echoed twice. "Not just in distance."
"I need the records," I screamed responding almost immediately , "The locked ones."
Her eyes went straight to Kaelen. "You drag death's mark with you. Do you know what he is?"
"He's mine," I said.
She smiled, sharp. "Then so is your fate."
She turned and walked, expecting us to follow.
Kaelen grabbed my hand. "You sure about this?"
"No," I said. "But we're out of time."
---
As we stepped into the Cradle, I looked back once.
The wind blew hard at and I immediately heard a whisper in my ears my ear:
"The child must be claimed… before the Wyrm wakes."
I froze, and looked around , searching for who said it
Kaelen didn't hear it.
But I did.
Because the voice sounded exactly like mine.