Page 4 of The Chains You Defy

How and why was a mystery to me.

My knees buckled, and I almost crashed to the ground, not for the first time in the last few days or even today.

I couldn’t shake the assumption that my pursuers were herding me.

My theory was that they didn’t want to end me. After all, they would have had ample opportunity to achieve this if my undoing had been their goal.

Still, I was forcing myself to flee.

This area was familiar.

I’d spent winters around here eons ago.

Yet the world appeared contorted through my blurry vision, and finding the small hidden cave I’d been searching for took me a while.

Relief made me shudder as I hauled myself inside and collapsed on the dirty ground. A putrid smell in the air burned in my nostrils.

What tainted the atmosphere I couldn’t identify, but the odor was vile. Or maybe I was simply imagining its existence.

But I didn’t.

My brain realized too late that something—the stench?—eroded my control over my muscles. Moving became impossible, and I slipped from my sitting position to lie crumpled on the ground. The world spun around me, and every tormented breath was a challenge that, if I were honest, I was going to lose very soon.

Would I see Auntie before the orb claimed me?

But of course, I wasn’t granted any mercy, no matter how small.

When the three large figures appeared at the mouth of the cave—the ones that had persecuted and herded me—there was nothing I could do.

My hunters had found and incapacitated me.

“There you are. I am very pleased to make your acquaintance after all these days.”

The voice grated on my eardrums like rancid waste, and even if I had wanted to answer, my body wasn’t cooperating.

“Sleep. We will wake you up again soon enough.”

The last thing my decelerating brain comprehended was that one of my captors, the one who had spoken, was the one Tine had called Father. The second resembled him, apart from him being of older age, and the third was different, all light. Then they all blurred together.

Just one mistake—

And now it was too late.

I shouldhave obeyed Auntie.

“A diary? I almost got killed for a fucking diary, Antas?”

“More like a recollection. One that is centuries old.”

“Have you read the whole godscursed thing?”

“Again, yes.”

“And?”

“No names, no places.”

“Let me guess. No context to our current conundrum.”