Chapter 9
The Mentor's Concern
Back in the human world, Silas, Elara's mentor, grows increasingly worried. He senses a darkness creeping into her, a deviation from the path he laid out for her. He fears she's lost.
The air in Silas’s small cottage was thick with the scent of dried herbs and something else, something acrid and old, like dust disturbed from a tomb. He ran a gnarled hand over the worn leather of Elara’s training journal, its pages filled with his precise, spidery script. Each entry was a lesson, a warning, a promise of the path she was meant to walk. But the last few entries, scrawled in Elara’s hand, were… different. The certainty, the sharp, clean lines of her resolve, had begun to blur, to fray.
He hadn’t heard from her in weeks, not since she’d slipped away, a ghost on the wind, chasing the King. A necessary hunt, he’d told himself. A culmination of years of training. But the silence that followed was a gnawing ache in his gut, a premonition that coiled tighter with each passing day. He’d seen it before, this insidious creep of the darkness, this subtle unraveling of a slayer’s soul when faced with the ancient allure of the night. He’d seen it in others, and he’d seen it, he feared, in himself, though he’d always managed to pull back from the precipice. Elara, however… Elara was different. Brighter. More volatile.
He stoked the dying embers of the fire, the sparks leaping like trapped fireflies, illuminating the worry etched deep into the lines of his face. He remembered the day he’d found her, a child with eyes like chips of obsidian, orphaned and adrift, her spirit untamed. He’d seen the fire in her, the raw, unyielding will that could be honed into the sharpest of weapons. He’d taught her everything he knew, every trick, every weakness of the creatures of the night. He’d sworn to protect her, to guide her, to ensure she didn’t succumb to the same fate that had claimed so many before.
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