CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO — The awakening Storm
The road back to Nightfall was quiet.
Too quiet.
The night even felt wrong.
Helena walked alone, her cloak pulled tightly around her shoulders as the early dawn mist clung to the earth. The village she had just left behind slowly disappeared behind a bend in the road, along with the small house that had always been her only home. Her grandmother's face lingered in her mind frail, smiling, and full of words Helena could not yet fully understand.
Your parents are not dead.
The thought echoed again, heavy and confusing. For all her life, she had believed herself an orphan, abandoned by fate and held together only by her grandmother's love. Now that truth had cracked open, leaving questions bleeding into one another. Why had they left? Why had they never returned? And why did the answers feel tied to the palace she was walking back to?
A sudden gust of wind tore through the trees.
Helena gasped as leaves spiraled violently around he. The sky darkened unnaturally, swallowing the fruit glow of stars. Her heart began to pound.
"Hello?" she whispered,her voice trembling.
No answer.
Only the wind
Stronger now..
It wrapped around her, pulling at her clothes, her hair whipping wildly across her face. A strange fear crep into her chest.
Something was wrong
Then
A whisper
"She is the one"
Helena froze
Her breath caught sharply in her throat. All in her head was just to run and she was ready to do so, but before she could run,shadow shifted between the trees.
Figures stepped out, clocked, silent, their faces hidden beneath deep hoods. The air around them pulsed with something dark and unnatural.
Helena stepped back instinctively.
"W-who are you?" She asked.
One of them moved forward
" You should have stayed hidden".
Her confusion deepened. "Hidden?, I don't understa-a-nd" she stammers
"You were never meant to return."
The wind roared louder.
Fear surged through her veins as one of them lifted a hand and darkness shot towards her.
Helena screamed.
The force struck her hard, throwing her back ward. Pain exploded through her body as she hit the ground. Her vision blurred.
She tried to crawl away but another strike came.
And another.
"I didn't do anything!!!" she cried,her voice shaking
"Exactly," one of them replied coldly. "And you never will."
A final surge of dark power rushed towards her.
Helena shut her eyes tightly.
This is it.
But the moment it touched her, something strange happened.
Something inside her awakened.