Chapter 3 Murmurs in the Dark

Elowen pushed ahead along the curved streets of Nocturnis, her boots quiet against the ancient cobblestones, each footfall echoing softly in the hush of twilight. The memory of fire still danced behind her eyes, the sacred twirling blaze that had flared during the interrupted mating ritual, wild and uncontained, yet filled with intention. Now, the warmth had fled her skin, leaving only the residue of something deeper: the kindling of purpose. Not rage. Not grief.

But a quiet, burning center of focus that carried her forward through the twilight haze like a compass drawn to something old and sacred.

The city of Nocturnis breathed beneath her feet. It's very bones, the black stone alleys, ivy-draped towers, whispering walls, seemed to speak a language just on the edge of comprehension. With each turn she took, the streets twisted tighter, spiraling inward, as though guiding her somewhere hidden. Lanterns flickered from open windows above, casting thin golden light across the fog-laced path, but Elowen did not need them. Something else was guiding her now. Something older than the streets.

The wind picked up as she stepped into a narrow, helical alley, a twisted passage walled in by crumbling masonry. The air shifted. It wasn't cold, but there was a thickness to it, like the atmosphere after a spell has been cast. The wind carried whispers, at first indistinguishable from the rustle of leaves and the murmuring creaks of timber. But as she ventured deeper, her pace slowed, and the noises transformed. The whispers sharpened.

It was not the wind speaking. Not entirely.

Elowen paused. She turned her head slightly, listening.

The voices were subtle, layered like silk on silk, fragments of sound woven together like a tapestry of breath. They pulsed in harmony with something deeper, something primal. It was not language in the way she understood it, but she could feel meaning forming from it. A vibration in her bones, a calling in her blood. It was magic, old magic. Elemental.

Her hand brushed against a wall, the moss-draped stone vibrating beneath her palm with a gentle hum. It was as if the city itself remembered something and longed to pass it on to someone who would listen.

The alley opened into a hidden courtyard, shrouded in dusk and enclosed by overgrown ivy and crumbling stone arches. It was perfectly circular, with walls warped by time and kissed by vines. At the center stood a worn pedestal, as ancient as the city itself, its surface smoothed by centuries of rain and reverence. Symbols were etched into the stone, soft carvings, some barely visible beneath the moss, others still glowing faintly with a forgotten power.

Elowen moved toward it slowly, reverently. The wind coiled around her like a breath, curling through her hair, caressing her neck. It didn't push her, it invited her.

The pedestal seemed to vibrate with a hum too low for ears. Her fingers hovered above the markings, hesitant but compelled. And when she finally made contact, the carvings reacted. A dull pulse echoed through her fingertips, crawling up her arms, resting beneath her breastbone. Her eyes fluttered closed.

The symbols lit softly, embers stirring to life.

Visions assaulted her mind, quick flashes carried on the whispering wind. Fire raging through a forest but dancing instead of consuming. A glacier cracks open to release a buried city. Water folding back like silk to reveal a temple hidden beneath the sea. Air swirling into the shape of a figure cloaked in silver mist. Earth splitting open, not in destruction, but in birth.

And then the voices became one.

They spoke no words, but their meaning bloomed in Elowen's mind like a slow, inevitable awakening:

The elements once moved in harmony. Now, they strain at their chains. Only the marked may remember. Only the chosen may restore.

Elowen gasped and stepped back from the pedestal, her knees buckling beneath her. She sank to the ground, her breath caught in her throat, her heart galloping in her chest. But she wasn't afraid. She was awed. She was... claimed.

She knelt before the pedestal, her palms flat on the mossy earth. The air thickened again, charged now, as though waiting for her to speak. But she had no words. Only questions. Who were the guardians the whispers had spoken of? Why did the elements feel fractured, severed from their essence? And why did she, a girl once thought ordinary, feel like the missing key in a door long sealed?

The wind answered her silence with another surge, fierce this time.

Leaves tore through the courtyard in a spiral, lifting into the air like a cyclone of memory. Elowen's hair whipped around her face, and her eyes snapped open as light danced through the swirling debris.

Then came the visions; clearer, sharper.

A battlefield where lightning met flame and stone rose like a shield. A cloaked figure stood at the edge of a cliff, arms lifted as a tidal wave bowed before them. A circle of guardians, hands joined, chanting beneath a blood-red moon. And finally... a girl. Her. Alone in the heart of the storm, eyes lit with every color of the elements, hands outstretched in defiance.

She saw herself standing at the edge of two worlds. Behind her, a city was crumbling under the weight of its forgotten history. Before her, a doorway made of starlight and shadow. She stepped through.

And the wind died.

Silence returned.

Elowen remained kneeling, but the air was different now. It felt as though something inside her had shifted, something awakened. Her breath came slowly, but steadily. She looked back at the pedestal. The faint glow of the runes was gone. But the feeling remained. She had been given something. Not just knowledge. Not just a vision. But purpose.

She rose to her feet, and the ground beneath her seemed to respond, solid, sure, welcoming. The moon above emerged from behind a veil of clouds, casting pale silver light over the courtyard. Everything looked the same, and yet... it wasn't.

She turned, facing the entrance of the alley she had come through. The path ahead was unclear, shrouded in the same mystery as the courtyard had been before she stepped into it. But now, she was different.

The voices were gone, but their message clung to her bones like heat from a fire long burned out.

There would be others, she sensed. Other places like this, pockets of old magic hidden throughout Nocturnis and beyond. And she would have to find them. Because something was coming. Something ancient. Something that wanted the elements not united, but unbound, uncontrolled.

She stepped out of the courtyard, glancing once over her shoulder. The pedestal stood quiet and unmoved, as if no vision had ever occurred, as if it were merely a ruin. But she knew better. She had heard its whispers. Felt its warnings. And now, it had given her the first piece of a much larger puzzle.

Nocturnis greeted her with silence. But it was no longer the silence of slumber, it was the silence before a storm.

She walked on, deeper into the labyrinth of the city. Her fingers still tingled from the contact with the stone. Her heart pulsed with a new rhythm. Every shadow that flickered across a wall, every gust of wind that tousled her cloak, seemed now to carry more weight. She was not a stranger here. She was something else entirely.

⸻

But she wasn't alone.

Not anymore.

A low rustle stirred the shadows behind her, too soft for the untrained ear, but Elowen had learned to listen. Her spine stiffened. Her breath hitched. She didn't stop walking, didn't turn her head. But her hand drifted toward the dagger at her hip.

Another footfall. Deliberate. Close.

They weren't trying to hide. Not anymore.

At the mouth of the alley ahead, a figure stepped into view. Cloaked in ash-gray robes, with a symbol glinting from their chest, a crescent moon broken into fragments, etched in obsidian. Their face was hidden beneath a veil of silver threads, but their posture spoke volumes.

A Sentinel.

Of the Bound Moon.

One of the city's hidden guardians. Or executioners. Depending on who you asked.

"Elowen of the Hollow Flame," the figure said, voice low and rough like smoke over ice. "You've wandered too far from safety."

She stopped mid-stride. "There's no safety left in Nocturnis."

The Sentinel tilted her head. "You should not have touched the runes."

"I didn't ask permission."

A pause.

Then-"That is why we're watching you now."

From the alley behind, two more figures emerged. Silent. Cloaked. Surrounding her like dusk swallowing the last rays of day.

Elowen didn't move. Her gaze flicked toward the silver coin now hidden in her cloak's inner pocket. It pulsed once, like it knew.

One of the Sentinels stepped closer. "The flame is awake again. And so are the things that fear it."

"And the ones who serve it," the female Sentinel added, almost gently.

"Which are you?" Elowen asked, voice calm but sharp as her blade.

The woman paused. Then offered a small bow. "That depends on what you become."

Before Elowen could reply, the three figures turned in perfect silence and vanished into the dark, no footsteps, no sound, like they were never truly there.

She stood still a moment longer.

Then kept walking.

This time, slower.

She wasn't just being followed.

She was being measured.

Judged.

And whatever was coming next... she would need to decide who she was long before fate chose for her.