The forest closed in, silence returning as suddenly as the chaos had begun.
Elara stopped, chest heaving, straining to hear. Only the fading echo of hooves and the distant call of a Hunter lingered.
Suddenly, the trees around her faded, her vision blurred, and light flared behind her eyes. Shadows moved where there were none, flashes of dark hoods, horses snorting, and a hand clamping around her wrist like an iron shackle.
Unsteady, she reached out and was relieved when her palm felt the bark of a tree. The vision faded. But the fear it left did not. A tremor ran through her, and she swallowed hard. Was it a warning? Or had the vision shown what waited for her, a glimpse of her own capture?
She pressed a trembling hand to her throat, forcing herself to breathe, and whispered, “Nay. Not yet.”
Elara drew in the scent of moss and damp earth, listening. The mist thickened around her, curling low and silver across the ground. It moved with purpose, winding between trunks, veiling shapes and sound alike.
Though danger could lurk in the forest, she always felt safe among the towering pines and generous oaks. To her, they were guardians, protectors of those who dwelled in the forest.
She pressed her brow to the bark. “I need your help. Please protect me.”
The fog swirled around her, shielding her, and with a fortified breath, she moved carefully through it. A strange stillness hummed around her. Somewhere ahead, she heard faint sobs and worried it was one of the women, lost or hurt.
Elara walked cautiously toward the sound. The fog faded just enough for her to spot two of the older healers huddled together, terror stark on their faces. The mist shrouded her approach, muffling her steps.
“Shhh…quiet,” she murmured, leaning over them. “Follow me.”
They obeyed without question.
Elara led them through the thickest fog, toward a cluster of fallen trees covered in ivy. The trunks formed a low, hollowed shelter. “In there. Stay until the forest clears. Don’t answer any call but mine.”
One of the women caught her hand. “Bless you, lass.”
“Thank the forest, it helps,” she whispered.
A distant pounding of a drum split the air. The Hunters were near again, voices carried on the wind, sharp commands and the jingle of bridles.
Elara pressed a finger to her lips. “Not a sound.”
The women vanished into the hollow. Elara stepped back into the mist, her heartbeat matching the rhythm of the drumbeats she swore she could hear moving somewhere far off, steady, cold, and relentless.
The mist kept her cloaked as she moved to see if any others needed her help.
The forest had swallowed her whole.
One moment Elara was there, the flash of her cloak, the glint of her silver hair, and the next she was gone, lost to the sudden, rolling mist that coiled thick between the trees.
“Bloody hell,” Dar hissed under his breath.
“Halt there!” the shout came.
“Bloody hell,” he hissed again.
“Make yourself known,” the Hunter ordered.
Dar turned as another Hunter appeared.
His eyes turned wide as they met Dar’s and he hurriedly turned away. “He’s a wanderer, no use to us. We got two more women. We are done here. Time to move on.”
Dar watched them ride off until the pounding of the horses’ hooves faded. He crouched, scanning the ground, his fingers brushing through wet leaves and scattered prints, and sniffing the air to see what scent he could pick up, anxious to find what Elara left behind. He found her light footprints, as if she had skipped along the ground barely leaving a mark. The fog suddenly crept in heavily across the soil, smothering the forest floor.
“Elara,” he called, firmly, but heard nothing in return.
The forest was silent, eerily so. He cursed again, quieter this time, his jaw tensing. He wasn’t a man who lost things. Not a quarry, not a trail. But he sensed a strangeness in the forest he’d never felt before. He couldn’t say what it was and yet he could feel it. The mist didn’t just hide the women… it guarded them.