The rain hadn't stopped. It pressed down in sheets, heavy enough to blur the world into moving gray. Sister Maren's hand still gripped my arm as we ran, her breath steady and sharp beside me. Behind us, the light that had burst from the chapel spilled into the sky, a white column breaking through the clouds. I didn't look back again. I couldn't.
Mud clung to my shoes. The air stung with cold. We ran until the garden wall bent east and the light behind us turned faint, a memory more than a glow. My chest still burned where the mark lay hidden, but not like before. It wasn't pain - it was a pull, faint and rhythmic, like a second heartbeat trying to remember a song.
Sister Maren slowed first. She lifted her head, scanning the field beyond the hedge. "There," she said quietly. "The millhouse. Keep low."
The shape appeared through the rain - a short stone building with a slanted roof and a broken wheel half-buried in mud. No smoke. No sign of light. We crossed the field and slipped inside through a door whose hinges had forgotten their voice.
Inside, the air smelled of damp wood and dust. A table stood near the wall, its legs uneven. Bags of grain lay collapsed on the floor like old bodies. Maren shut the door and pressed her ear to the wood for a long moment before letting out a slow breath.
"We'll rest here," she said. Her voice was quiet but carried a weight that made me obey.
I sank down near the wall. My arms trembled. The noise of the rain softened against the roof until it became a single endless hum. For the first time since the light had touched me, silence felt like something I could breathe.
Maren moved through the room with careful hands. She found a dry cloth, a small lantern, a piece of flint. When the light caught, it was faint - a small flame in a world that had forgotten warmth. She looked at me across the glow. "Are you hurt?"
"I don't think so." My ankle ached where the circle had caught it, but I didn't say it.
She sat on the floor opposite me and began wringing water from her shawl. The fabric dripped in steady rhythm. "You did not mean to call it," she said at last.
I looked up. "Call what?"
"The Light," she said simply. "It heard you anyway."
I didn't know how to answer. My mind still played the image of the mirror opening, of that figure inside it, tall and bright, raising a hand as if he knew me. It felt like a dream that had stolen something real.
"I didn't call anything," I said. "It doesn't need your voice," she said. "Only a way through."
Her eyes stayed on the lantern flame. I saw how her fingers moved - steady, careful, as if the act of touching light had to be done with respect.
After a while, she said, "Let me see your chest."
I hesitated. "It's fine," I said quickly.
"Please." Her tone wasn't strict, just final.
I pulled my shirt aside. The mark showed faintly under my skin - a pale spiral glowing so softly that it almost looked imagined. The warmth pulsed with my heartbeat.
She leaned closer. When the light from the lantern touched it, the mark brightened for a second, then dimmed. She didn't move. Her eyes softened, but her jaw tightened. "I've seen this before," she whispered.
I looked at her. "Where?"
She sat back, as if remembering something distant. "When I was with the Wardens," she said. "Before I came here. We studied those the Light touched. We tried to measure it, contain it. Some said it could be drawn out - pulled from the body before it burned the mind." She paused. "It never worked."
I waited. Her gaze drifted to the small window, where rain traced thin lines down the glass. "They called them the White-Burned," she said quietly. "The chosen, they thought. Until the Light decided they were too small to hold it."
I swallowed. "What happened to them?"
Her voice dropped. "They burned from the inside. No fire, no smoke - just light where flesh should be. Then nothing human stayed."
The silence after those words felt like a closed door. I couldn't tell if she pitied me or feared me.
"You think that's what I am?" I said.
She looked at me, her eyes clearer than I'd ever seen them. "I think you haven't burned yet."
We didn't sleep. The hours passed without changing. The rain outside thinned but never stopped. When the lantern died, the world went gray again. Maren stood by the window, her profile drawn in soft light. Every so often she'd turn her head, listening for sounds I couldn't hear.
Near dawn, she said, "They'll search the stream first. That's where the roads meet. We move before they do."
We stepped back into the cold. Mist clung to the fields. The mill's wheel creaked once in the wind and fell silent again. The world smelled of wet earth and metal.
We followed the stream east, walking in its shadow where reeds grew tall. The water ran dark, swollen from the storm. I kept my eyes on the current, thinking of the light, of how it had poured from the mirror like breath, how it had reached for me as if it remembered. I didn't know what it wanted. I wasn't sure I wanted to know.
Maren broke the silence first. "When it called, what did you see?"
I thought for a moment. "Nothing clear," I said. "A man. Maybe. I couldn't see his face."
She nodded slowly, not surprised. "Sometimes the Light takes shapes we know. Sometimes it borrows them."
"You think it was real?"
She stopped walking and looked at me. "Do you?"
I didn't answer. The truth was, it felt real in the way pain feels real - something that doesn't need belief to exist.
By midday, the rain had turned to fine drizzle. The clouds lifted just enough for color to return to the world. Ahead of us, the stream widened, bending toward a shallow ford. A small bridge of stone crossed it, half broken by time. Beyond it, the trees thickened into forest.
Maren slowed near the edge and crouched low, scanning the far bank. Her hand went to the satchel at her side. From it she drew a small shard of crystal, no larger than a finger, wrapped in cloth. It gave off a faint pulse, like the beat of a sleeping heart.
She held it close to the water, studying the reflection. The glow from the shard bled into the current, twisting along the surface before fading. She frowned. "They're closer than I hoped."
"Who?"
"The Radiant Knights. They carry instruments that answer to this light. When it shines, they follow."
Her eyes shifted, darker now. "And if there's a Scholar among them…" she paused, lowering her voice, "it means the Wardens gave the order. They don't hunt, Lucian – they collect
"So it's my fault."
She didn't deny it. Her face softened, though, and she put the shard away. "Fault isn't the right word. The Light doesn't ask permission. It only finds what's missing."
We crossed the bridge quietly. The stones were slick, and the stream whispered below. At the middle, I looked down. My reflection wavered in the moving water - pale, thin, almost ghostlike. Then, for a heartbeat, it wasn't mine.
The shape that looked back at me was taller, broader. The hair was gold, not white. A mark glowed faintly at the center of his chest, matching mine. He looked straight at me - not through me, but at me - as if he knew exactly who I was.
I stepped back, breath caught in my throat. The image flickered and vanished. Only water again, running dark and fast.
Maren was beside me in a moment. "What did you see?"
"I don't know," I said. My voice trembled more than I wanted it to. "It was… someone."
She looked down at the water but didn't lean close. "You mustn't touch it when it does that," she said softly. "The Light echoes through mirrors, through anything that remembers shape. Sometimes it looks back."
We crossed the rest of the way in silence.
The forest on the far bank was quiet. The air smelled of moss and rain-soaked leaves. We followed a narrow path that wound between the trunks. Maren moved as if she'd been here before.
I wanted to ask her how she knew the way, but the words didn't come. Each step felt heavier, as if the ground itself didn't want to let us go.
When we finally stopped, the trees opened into a small clearing. The light there was soft and cold. She turned to me.
"We'll stay here until night," she said. "Then we move north."
I nodded. I wanted to rest, but my chest ached again. The mark pulsed harder, like it wanted to speak.
Maren noticed. "Breathe," she said quietly. "Don't fight it. The more you resist, the stronger it pulls."
I sat on the damp grass and tried to do as she said. For a moment, it worked. The pain softened, became warmth, then a hum.
Inside that hum, I thought I heard something faint - words that weren't words, carried like sound under water. A voice, soft and certain: "You remember the fall… you just don't remember you."
My eyes opened. The forest looked the same, but it felt thinner, as if light was hiding beneath the bark of every tree.
Maren watched me carefully. "You heard it, didn't you?" she said.
I didn't answer. I didn't need to.
Later, when dusk came and the forest turned gray again, we sat near the stream. The surface had calmed, smooth and dark. Maren handed me a small piece of bread from her satchel. We ate in silence.
After a while, she said, "There's something I didn't tell you. About the night I left the Wardens."
I looked at her. She didn't meet my eyes.
"They brought in a child," she said. "Younger than you are now. His mark burned too early. They tried to stop it - forced the light back into him. It tore the room apart. I was the only one who lived."
Her hands were still. The firelight from the lantern drew lines across her face. "I thought I could forget it. But tonight, when I saw the mirror open, it was the same light."
The sound of the stream filled the pause between us. Finally, she said, "If they find you, they'll do the same. Only this time they'll succeed."
She looked at me then, her eyes dark and steady. "I won't let that happen."
The wind shifted. A faint echo rolled through the trees - not thunder, but the dull ring of metal. Maren stood. "They've crossed the bridge," she said. "We move now."
We followed the stream again, faster this time. The path narrowed, the forest closing in around us. When we reached a bend, the moon broke through the clouds for the first time that night. Its light fell across the water.
I looked down once more. The reflection was there again - the man with the golden hair, watching, silent. This time he lifted his hand, and light gathered in his palm like a heartbeat returning.
The air tightened. My mark flared. Maren saw it too. She grabbed my arm. "Don't look at him," she said, but her voice was too late.
The water brightened. For a moment, it was like the surface became a window, and on the other side stood that same figure from the mirror. He mouthed a word I couldn't hear.
Then the reflection shattered - not with sound, but with light. Ripples spread outward, breaking the image apart into silver lines that ran through the current.
Maren pulled me back. The wind rose, cold and heavy, scattering the leaves around us.
She leaned close and whispered, her voice barely more than breath. "It's not the mirror that found you," she said. "It's what waits behind it."
The light in the water faded. The night returned. And somewhere far behind us, the bell finally rang.
-- End of Chapter 4 --