Sable Morrow's Arc

Chapter 2 of 6

Night fell, but the boarding house never truly slept. Sable sat on her narrow bed and listened. A lodger coughed down the hall. Another paced his floor above her. The old building breathed through thin walls, and every creak carried. She had meant to test her light here, alone, with the door shut. But a shut door meant nothing. Any one of them might knock, or walk in by mistake. One stray glow and her secret was gone. She gripped the cracked sun amulet on its chain. The metal hid her light, but it could not teach her anything. If she wanted to learn the light's rules, she needed a place no eyes could reach. The house could not give her that. Nowhere inside these walls was safe. So she left. She pulled on her robes, tucked the amulet beneath her collar, and slipped down the stairs. The front door stuck, then gave. Cold air met her. Ivy dripped along the porch rail, wet and black in the dark. She stepped past it and walked away from the lit windows, toward the trees. The woods swallowed the lamplight behind her. Sable followed a thin path she had never taken in daylight. Roots caught her feet. An owl called once, then went quiet. She told herself to turn back. But every step took her farther from listening ears, and that was worth the fear. The path dropped. Stone appeared under her hands, slick and cool. She had found a hollow in the hillside, half swallowed by moss and hanging vines. Inside stood the ruin of a small shrine, its carved sun worn almost flat by time. Water trickled somewhere deep in the dark. No floor above her. No walls shared with strangers. For the first time, Sable stood alone where no one could walk in. She lifted the chain over her head and set the amulet on the broken altar. At once her wrist warmed. A thread of gold woke beneath her skin, then another, climbing her arm. Here there was no one to hide from, so her fear loosened, and the light came easier. She held her breath and watched it. She tried to think of calm, to pull the glow brighter the way she pulled a thread through cloth. It flickered. It did not obey. It rose and fell with her heartbeat, not her will. Still, something had changed. She had a place now. A quiet, hidden room of stone where she could fail as many times as she needed, and no one would ever see. Then a low growl rolled out of the dark behind the altar. Sable froze. Two eyes caught her gold light and threw it back, pale and cold. Something large shifted in the shadow of the shrine. She was not alone after all.