The moon hung low over the Whispering Hollow, casting pale silver on the twisted trees. Elira wasn’t supposed to be there—not that night, not ever. The elders forbade it, warned of ancient magics and the madness of forgotten spirits. But Elira was hunting rabbits. Her brother was sick, and the healer had demanded meat for a potion. She had no choice.
She crept softly, bow strung, eyes sharp. That’s when she heard it.
Voices.
Not animal sounds. Not birds or the wind rustling through brittle leaves.
No—actual voices. Human voices. Male and female, low and urgent.
Curious, she slipped behind the trunk of a knotted willow and crouched. The clearing ahead glowed faintly with a blue shimmer, as if the air itself shimmered. Two figures in cloaks stood facing each other, one tall and graceful, the other hunched and wrapped in feathers.
Elira didn’t recognize them.
“I told you,” the tall one hissed, “the girl is close to awakening. The mark on her wrist flared last night. She’s dreaming of the Veil.”
“She must be taken,” the feathered one rasped, voice like dry leaves. “Before the others find her.”
Elira’s heart stopped.
Taken? Who were they talking about?
She looked down at her wrist instinctively, tugging back the cloth wrapped around it. The faint birthmark—a curved line like a crescent moon—glowed softly.
No.
She stumbled backward in panic, and a twig snapped underfoot.
The cloaked heads turned sharply.
“She’s here,” the tall one said.
Elira bolted. Her legs pounded against the earth as branches lashed at her arms. She didn’t dare look back. She ran until the trees thinned and her lungs burned. At the edge of the Hollow, she collapsed beside a stream, gasping.
A whisper touched her ear.
“Elira…”
She froze.
The stream’s surface shimmered, warping her reflection. It wasn’t her face staring back.
It was older. Wiser. And glowing.
“Elira,” the reflection said, “you have heard the truth. The mark is real. You are not who you think.”
Elira backed away. “This is a dream.”
“No,” the voice said. “This is your awakening. They fear your power. That’s why they came tonight.”
Elira turned and ran home, mind spinning.
At dawn, she confronted her grandmother.
“I went to the Hollow,” she said. “I heard them talking about me. About the mark. What does it mean?”
The old woman closed her eyes and sighed. “I hoped we had more time.”
She sat Elira down and pulled an old box from beneath the hearth. Inside lay a crystal pendant, a silver ring, and a scroll sealed in wax.
“Our bloodline is older than the kingdom,” her grandmother said. “You are of the Wyrdborn—the last daughter of the Veil. Your mother was the last to bear the mark before you. She vanished when you were a child. We thought you’d been spared.”
“What are the Wyrdborn?” Elira asked.
“Those who can walk between the worlds. Between life and dream, shadow and flame. You have the Sight, Elira. And now they’ve sensed it.”
“Who are they?”
“The Hollow Watchers. Remnants of a once-sacred order, now twisted by their hunger for power. They need you to open the Veil.”
Elira shook her head. “Why me?”
“Because only a Wyrdborn can pass through the Veil alive. And the Veil guards the River of Truth—where all destinies are written.”
The pendant pulsed in the box, warm and humming.
“You must choose,” her grandmother said. “Hide, and they’ll come for you. Or learn what you are. Take the path your mother once walked.”
That night, Elira stood at the edge of the Hollow again, pendant around her neck, bow at her back. Her grandmother’s words echoed in her ears.
She stepped into the moonlight.
This time, the Hollow welcomed her. The blue shimmer brightened, forming a circle of ancient runes at her feet. The air grew warm.
Then they appeared.
The tall one, and the feathered one.
“So,” the tall figure said, “you heard us. And came anyway.”
“I came to finish this,” Elira said.
She held up the pendant, which blazed like a miniature sun.
They recoiled. “You don’t know how to use it.”
“I don’t have to,” she said. “I just need to remember.”
The runes lit up. The trees shivered. And then—
Everything shifted.
The Hollow peeled away, like paper burning from the edges, revealing a realm of light and mirrors. Reflections of countless possible Eliras surrounded her—some warriors, some scholars, some queens. They all stared back.
One stepped forward and said, “You heard what you weren’t meant to. That was no accident.”
“You are meant to rewrite what was broken,” said another.
Behind her, the Hollow Watchers screamed.
Elira reached forward and touched the central mirror. Light flared.
She saw her mother.
Then her past.
Then the future.
And then—clarity.
When she stepped back into the waking world, the Hollow was still.
The Watchers were gone.
Her mark now glowed like a full moon, the pendant fused to her skin.
Elira walked home not as a girl with questions—but as the first Wyrdborn in a hundred years to survive the Veil.
She had heard what she wasn’t meant to.
And it had changed everything.
React
