Chapter 39 Wraith Child
Elara's POV
The next day around noon, I followed the faint magical trace I'd extracted from the abandoned hospital's black magic residue. The tracking spell had taken me most of the morning to complete, weaving silver threads through the air that only I could see as they pulled me toward the source of that dark energy, and now those threads led me into a part of the pack lands I'd never visited before.
The houses here were nothing like the main pack residential areas with their neat lawns and well-maintained structures. These buildings were little more than shacks, wooden constructions that leaned against each other with roofs patched by scraps of metal and plastic, windows covered in tape and cardboard instead of proper glass, and dirt roads that wound between them in chaotic patterns. The air smelled different here too, heavy with the scent of poverty and resignation, of people who had stopped expecting better and just focused on surviving one more day.
My silver tracking thread led me to a particularly dilapidated cottage at the end of a narrow alley, its paint peeling in long strips and its front step rotted through in the middle. I raised my hand and knocked three times, the sound echoing hollowly in the quiet afternoon, and after a long pause I heard shuffling footsteps approaching from inside.
The door cracked open just wide enough for me to see a woman's face, and I had to work to keep my expression neutral at what I saw. She couldn't have been older than forty but she looked ancient, her face gaunt and lined with deep grooves of suffering, her eyes sunken so far back in her skull that they looked like dark holes, and her hair had gone completely white despite her relative youth. She stared at me with the kind of wariness that came from having the world beat you down too many times, her body positioned to slam the door shut at the first sign of threat.
"We haven't done anything wrong," she said immediately. "Please, whatever you think we did, we didn't—"
"I'm not here to accuse you of anything," I interrupted gently, keeping my hands visible and my posture non-threatening. "I'm here to help Mia."
The woman's entire body went rigid and for a moment something flickered in those hollow eyes—hope, bright and desperate and painful to witness—before it died just as quickly as it had appeared. "She's already..." Her voice broke and she had to swallow hard before continuing. "She's not her anymore. There's nothing anyone can do."
"There is," I said firmly, meeting her gaze directly. "I can help her. But I need you to let me try."
The woman's hand trembled on the door and I watched her internal struggle play out across her ravaged features. Finally she stepped back and pulled the door open wide. "Come in," she whispered.
The interior of the cottage was even more depressing than the outside. The entire living space consisted of a single room barely twelve feet square, with a narrow bed pushed against one wall, a rickety wooden chair in the corner, and nothing else except peeling wallpaper and water-stained floorboards.
But what caught my attention immediately were the photographs covering every available inch of wall space—dozens of pictures of a young girl with bright eyes and a wide smile, pictures that showed her at various ages from infancy through early adolescence, pictures that captured a happiness and innocence that no longer existed in this room.
On the bed sat a figure so thin and fragile she looked like she might shatter if touched too roughly. Her long dark hair hung in tangled curtains around her face and when she lifted her head to look at us her eyes were completely empty, vacant and glassy like a doll's eyes, like there was nobody home behind them at all. She didn't react to our presence, didn't acknowledge that anything had changed, just sat there staring at nothing with her hands folded loosely in her lap.
My wolf stirred uneasily in my chest and when I reached out with my magical senses to examine the girl I felt my stomach drop. Mia's soul was there but it was fractured, shattered into pieces with only about a third of it actually residing in her body while the rest had scattered across dimensional rifts created by her trauma, lost in the spaces between reality where memories became prisons and pain became eternal.
"I can bring her back," I said, and my voice came out harder and more determined than I'd intended. "I can find the pieces of her soul and put them back together."
The mother looked at me with naked desperation. "You can really do that?"
"Yes." I pulled a small leather pouch from my jacket pocket and began drawing out silver moonstone powder, using it to trace an intricate summoning circle on the floor around Mia's bed.
When the circle was complete I bit down on my index finger hard enough to draw blood and used it to activate the core of the spell, painting a final rune in the exact center that pulsed with crimson light. Then I began to chant in the old language, words that tasted of copper and moonlight on my tongue, and watched as silver threads began to extend from the circle like searching fingers reaching into the void.
The first soul fragment came back within minutes, a glowing piece of essence that looked like crystallized starlight, and when it touched Mia's forehead and sank into her skin I saw her body shudder slightly.
The second fragment took longer to locate but eventually returned, followed by the third, and with each piece that reunited with her core I saw more life returning to Mia's eyes, saw her beginning to blink and focus and make small sounds of confusion in the back of her throat.
But as the fourth and final fragment began its journey back, the temperature in the room plummeted so fast I could see my breath misting in the air. A sound filled the space, high-pitched and piercing and unmistakable—the wail of an infant, sharp with rage and grief and endless suffering.
A shape materialized between the returning soul fragment and Mia's body, a small translucent form wreathed in blood-red mist that coalesced into the approximate outline of a newborn baby. The wraith child's features were indistinct but its eyes burned with hatred and its tiny hands reached out not in supplication but in fury, and when it opened its mouth the shriek that emerged made the windows rattle in their frames.
This was Mia's unborn child, the baby that Vanessa had murdered with a single kick, and the wraith had never moved on because it had died in violence and terror and had been denied even the basic acknowledgment of its existence.
The vengeful wraith lunged toward me and I threw three silver talismans into the air, watching them expand into a shimmering barrier that caught the attack with a sound like breaking glass. The wraith child screamed again and hurled itself against my shield with supernatural strength, and I felt cracks beginning to form in the magical structure as I struggled to maintain both the summoning spell and the protective barrier simultaneously.
My hands moved rapidly through the air weaving threads of magic into a new form, shaping them into something soft and gentle and safe—a cradle made of pure silver light that hummed with the lullabies my own mother had sung to me as a child. I pushed the cradle toward the raging wraith even as it battered against my failing shield, and when I spoke my voice was as gentle as I could make it despite the strain of holding multiple spells at once.
"Little one," I whispered, "your mother is suffering too. She needs you to rest now. She needs you to find peace."
The wraith child paused in its assault and for just a moment I saw confusion flicker across its indistinct features, saw something that might have been recognition or longing or the ghost of what could have been if it had been allowed to live.
I seized that moment of hesitation and wrapped the silver cradle around the wraith, pulling it into an embrace of light and warmth that dampened its rage and soothed its pain. The wraith child struggled briefly then went still, its cries fading to soft whimpers and then to silence as the cradle rocked it gently into the peace it had been denied in death.
With the wraith contained I released the last soul fragment and watched it shoot forward and sink into Mia's forehead with a flash of brilliant white light. The summoning circle flared once, twice, then faded as the spell completed itself, and I quickly sealed the cradle containing the wraith child into a small crystal vial that I tucked into my bag before anyone could ask questions I wasn't ready to answer.
The light faded completely and Mia gasped, her eyes flying open and focusing properly for the first time in two years. She looked around the room in obvious confusion, taking in her mother's aged appearance and the unfamiliar surroundings, and when she spoke her voice was hoarse from disuse but coherent.
"Mom?" She blinked several times. "Where... where am I? What happened to you? You look so..."
"Old?" Her mother sobbed and threw herself at the bed, wrapping Mia in a crushing embrace. "Oh god, Mia, my baby, you're back, you're really back!"
Mia's arms came up slowly to return the hug and I watched tears begin streaming down her face even though she clearly didn't understand what was happening. "Mom, I don't understand. Why are you crying? What's going on?"
I stepped forward carefully. "Mia, you've been gone for two years. Your soul shattered and scattered, and you've been living as an empty shell all this time."
Mia's head snapped toward me and her eyes went wide with fear and suspicion. "Why would you help me?"
I said quietly. "Because we have something in common—we're both victims of Vanessa Blackwood."
At the sound of that name Mia's entire body went rigid and her face drained of all color. Her hands flew to her stomach in an instinctive protective gesture even though there was nothing there to protect anymore, and when the memories came flooding back she began to shake violently.
"She killed my baby," Mia whispered, and then she was screaming it, her voice raw and broken. "She killed my baby! She kicked me and I fell and there was so much blood and my baby died and nobody cared, nobody did anything, they all said it was my fault, they all said I deserved it!"
Her mother held her tighter while Mia sobbed, and I waited in silence while she purged two years of trapped grief and rage. Eventually the sobs quieted to hiccupping breaths and Mia lifted her tear-stained face to look at me with red-rimmed eyes.
"Why?" she asked hoarsely. "Why did you bring me back? I was finally gone, finally free from remembering—"
"Because you deserve justice," I said firmly. "And because I'm going to make sure Vanessa pays for what she did to you."
Something flickered in Mia's eyes at that, something dark and hungry that made her look less like a broken victim and more like someone who had touched the abyss and come back changed.
Before either of us could speak again I reached into my bag and pulled out the crystal vial, holding it up so the silver cradle inside caught the dim afternoon light. Through the transparent glass they could see the blood-red mist wrapped in shimmering threads, could make out the small shape contained within.
"There's something else," I said quietly, my expression grave. "What was binding you wasn't just trauma. It was this."
Mia's mother moved to stand between me and her daughter instinctively. "What is that thing?"
I met Mia's eyes directly. "It's your child. A wraith child. The baby that was killed before it could be born."