Silver Eyes

Lena

I wasn't supposed to be here.

Not just at the edge of the forest, staring into the darkness where I knew something—someone—was watching. No, I wasn't supposed to be in this village at all.

I didn't belong.

I never had.

I had lived in Blackthorn since I was a child, but I was not one of them. The others had been born here, raised on its traditions, tied to the land and its unspoken rules. But I had come here as an outsider, brought by my uncle after my parents died in a fire I barely remembered.

I was eight. Lost. Confused. And I had quickly learned that outsiders were never truly accepted.

The village tolerated me, but they did not embrace me. I was different—too quiet, too curious, too drawn to the things that made others afraid. While the other children whispered of the monsters in the woods, I had always wanted to know if the stories were true.

Now I did.

Now I wished I didn't.

A cool breeze rustled the leaves, sending a shiver down my spine. The sky was painted with stars, the moon hanging heavy above me. I should have gone home, back to the small house my uncle left me when he passed. Back to safety.

But instead, I lingered at the tree line, my heart pounding in time with the memories clawing at the edges of my mind.

Sometimes, I thought I had imagined them. My parents. Their faces blurred at the edges like a fading dream, the details slipping away the harder I tried to hold on to them.

But I remembered my mother's hands, soft and warm, always brushing my hair back when I was scared. She used to hum when she cooked, a sweet, lilting tune that I never recognized but always comforted me. I remembered the way she smelled—lavender and something earthy, something old, like the books she used to read late into the night.

I remembered my father's laugh, deep and full, the kind that made my chest feel warm. He would lift me high onto his shoulders, spinning me until the world became a blur of color. He smelled of pine and smoke, of the outdoors, of safety.

I remembered how they looked at each other—like they shared a secret no one else in the world knew.

And I remembered the fear in their eyes the night the fire took them from me.

I had been too young to understand it then, but now, standing here with the night pressing in around me, I wondered if it hadn't just been fear of the flames.

Had they known what was coming?

Had they known who was coming?

Because now, when I thought back to that night, to the moment my uncle pulled me away from the burning wreckage, I wasn't just remembering the fire.

I was remembering the silver eyes watching me from the darkness.

Just like his.

I sucked in a sharp breath, my chest tightening. The thought had never occurred to me before, had never even seemed possible. But now, standing at the edge of the woods, my past and present crashing together, I couldn't shake the feeling that the fire that destroyed my family and the creature I met in the woods were somehow connected.

Was it him? Had he been there that night?

Or was it something worse?

A cold dread curled in my stomach.

I needed answers.

And I knew exactly where to find them.