Chapter 4 — Shadows Between Us
Sleep had become a stranger to Elara.
She lay on the motel bed, eyes fixed on the ceiling, listening to the rain clawing at the window. The dream hadn't come tonight — no fire, no screams — but something worse had replaced it.
A voice.
Soft, silken, dripping venom.
"You will wear both rings in the end. And when you do, you'll forget who you were."
She bolted upright, heart thudding. Her ring glowed faintly on her finger, pulsing like a heartbeat.
Something inside it stirred.
Liam stared at the mirror in his bathroom. He hadn't shaved in two days. His eyes were sunken, not from lack of sleep — from something else.
"You're losing yourself," he whispered.
He touched the ring.
The glass fogged — but not from steam.
Words appeared in the mist:
He's watching.
She's waking up.
He stumbled back.
In the reflection behind him, a girl stood in the corner.
Dripping wet. Pale. Lips purple from cold.
Aria.
"You left me," she whispered.
He spun around. Empty.
The ring on his finger burned.
The next day, Elara and Liam met again — not by chance.
They agreed to stop pretending fate wasn't involved.
"We both have rings that glow when we're near each other," Liam said, half-sarcastic, half-afraid. "That's not nothing."
"Mine talks sometimes," Elara confessed.
"Mine shows things. Things I don't want to remember."
They didn't talk for a moment.
Then she asked the question neither of them wanted to say aloud:
"What if someone put them on us on purpose?"
From the rooftops, Damien watched. Aria's instructions whispered through the silver earpiece.
"Let them question. Let them doubt. Then pull."
That night, Elara returned to her room.
The lights were off. Her ring was glowing.
And written on the wall, scrawled in what looked like ash:
"You will burn for what you carry."
She turned — and the shadows moved.