Chapter Three – Alone in the Shadow
"Leave," I whispered, my voice raw. My chest heaved as I watched the villagers disperse like leaves in the wind, each step measured, eyes fixed on me even as they moved away. My command had worked. They obeyed, as they always did.
Lyra remained. Silent, calm, watching me from a few steps away. Her presence was unnerving — not threatening, but impossible to ignore. I could feel her eyes under the blindfold, piercing even without sight.
I stepped away from the well, needing distance, needing space. Lyra's movements were fluid, almost predatory, as she followed without sound. My heart pounded. My hands clenched into fists.
Then she turned, walking slowly back toward the center of the village, leaving me alone with my thoughts. I closed my eyes, letting my shoulders slump in anger and frustration. My chest burned. My hands shook. I felt the mark beneath my skin, throbbing, reminding me that even alone I was never truly free.
I opened my eyes and began to walk, feet crunching in the dirt paths, avoiding the villagers I passed, keeping careful distance. My gaze landed on a small, empty hut at the edge of the village, half-hidden by twisted vines and shadows. Desperate for solitude, I slipped inside, shutting the rough wooden door behind me.
The room was empty and bare. Dust hung in the air, thick and dry. I slid my back along the cold, splintered wall until I sank to the floor, legs pulled close to my chest. My hands clutched at my knees as the tears began to fall — hot, uncontrolled, and utterly helpless.
I tried to remember. Anything. How had I gotten here? What had my life been like before this? The memories refused to come. Faces blurred. Names vanished. Even the sensation of home, of belonging, of simple life—gone. It was as though I had been ripped from existence and dropped into this nightmare with nothing to anchor me.
I pressed my forehead against my knees and sobbed. The sound echoed in the empty hut, bouncing off walls that held no warmth, no comfort. My whole body shook with grief, fear, and rage. The mark burned beneath my skin, pulsing in rhythm with my tears, reminding me: I was still theirs. I was still the queen.
I remembered fragments—flashes of running, of screaming, of a village I didn't know. Nothing made sense. Nothing fit together. My head spun. My heart raced uncontrollably. The hut felt smaller, suffocating, the walls closing in with every breath.
I sat like that for what felt like hours, until exhaustion slowed my sobs to quiet gasps. My hands were wet, my knees scraped against the stone floor, and my body ached with the tension of holding in terror and fury all at once.
And then I heard it. A soft footstep outside the hut. My eyes shot up. I froze, pressing my back harder against the wall. My heart thudded in my chest so loudly I feared it would give me away.
"Seris," a voice said, calm and distant, yet impossibly close.
Lyra.
"I'm not… I don't want to talk," I whispered, voice trembling. "Leave me alone."
There was silence. Then, a faint sound of movement — careful, deliberate, respectful of the distance I demanded. I closed my eyes again, trying to ground myself, trying to remember who I was before this, but the memories refused to come.
Finally, a shadow fell across the doorway. I flinched but did not look. "I know you are afraid," Lyra said softly. "And you should be. But you cannot stay here forever. You cannot hide from them, from yourself, from the mark. It will call. And when it does… you will answer."
I shook my head violently, pressing my palms over my ears. "No! I won't! I don't care! I don't care about any of this!"
"You already do," Lyra replied, calm, unwavering. "The moment they obeyed your command, the moment they bent their lives to you, you felt it. The weight. The pull. The responsibility. You cannot ignore it, and you cannot escape it."
I buried my face in my knees again, shivering with rage and helplessness. My mind spun. My tears fell unchecked. "I don't even know who I was," I whispered brokenly. "I can't remember… nothing. I'm not even… me anymore."
Lyra did not answer immediately. Her presence remained just beyond reach, a reminder that I was never truly alone. Finally, she knelt a few feet from me, still careful to respect the space I demanded. "Memory is a trick," she said softly. "It can leave you, take refuge, hide. But it can return. You will remember—when the mark chooses, when the village demands, when you need it most."
I shook my head, trying to absorb her words, trying to hold onto the thread of sanity I still had. But nothing could reach the depth of panic curling in my chest. I could feel the pulse beneath my skin, a rhythm that was not my own, like the heartbeat of the village itself.
I pressed my palms harder to the floor, willing myself to stand, to move, to escape this hut, this moment, this truth. My mind screamed at me: fight, run, do something! But my body refused. Every muscle ached with exhaustion. Every nerve screamed with fear.
And yet, in that hollow silence, with the cold stone against my back and Lyra's calm presence nearby, I felt the first flicker of something else: power.
A quiet hum beneath my skin, subtle at first, almost imperceptible. A reminder that even if I could not remember myself, even if I could not leave, even if I was terrified, there was something alive within me. Something that could command. Something that the villagers, that Lyra, that even the mark itself… would obey.
I shivered at the thought.
I closed my eyes again, sinking deeper into the floor, letting the cold stone press into me. And as the tears slowed and my breathing evened, one horrifying truth settled in my chest:
I was alone.