A Son with Burning Eyes

A Son with Burning Eyes
The silence surrounding them was loud even though it was not heard. Keal couldn't hear at first. His ear rang from the blast, his chest still pounding from the force that slammed him into the walls. His claws were his only source of support as he pierced it hard into the ground preventing him from being swept away. 

The storm was over but peace wasn't assured. 
“I am here.”
The words sank deep into his marrow like a knife on his skin. Keal groaned out loud as he struggled to stand to his feet. His body still bled from the injuries he had sustained and pain shot from him, but he ignored it all. For now, the only thing that mattered to him was Lila. 
And there she was, laying helpless in the center of it all, her hair spread across the stone. Her skin had become pale from the whatever power that had just surged through her, that almost killed them all. Her belly still vibrated violently, still passing through heavy contractions. The mark at her neck radiated a faint light like a dim fire. Her lips moved as she muttered words only she could hear. 
He crawled to her side, and pressed his forehead against hers, taking shallow breaths, he whispered, "We've got this,” though he wasn't sure it was true anymore. 
Then, he looked around, searching and waiting for what was next to come, maybe Darius, maybe the guards. He knew the battle was far from over. 
But where Darius stood, nothing remained. His sword was shattered, and his armor littered among the ruins but his body was nowhere to be found. Of the man himself, there was only dust scattered across the snow.
Keal stared at it for a long moment, disbelief anchoring his chest. Could it truly be over? After all the blood, all the hunts, all the nights of fleeing and fighting—could Darius be gone?
The wolf inside him growled low, uncertain. Victory never came so cleanly.
But Lila cried out then, wrenching his focus back.
Her body seized against his, nails digging into his arm. The contraction ripped through her with brutal force. Keal’s hands shook as he tried to steady her, pressing down gently against her stomach, feeling the child thrash inside. Alive and fighting.
“Stay with me,” he begged. His voice broke, but he didn’t care. “Our son—he’s almost here. Just hold on a little longer.”
Her breath came ragged, broken, but she nodded faintly, clinging to his voice, his presence.
And for a heartbeat, Keal believed it. Believed they had fought their way through the storm, through death, to this moment. That they would make it.
Then came the sound.
It was faint at first, so soft he thought it was the wind moving through hollow stone. But the silence was too heavy, and the sound too sharp. A murmur. Then a rumble. And then—
A laugh.
Keal froze. It wasn't Darius, not human either. 
It came from everywhere at once—the sky, the soil, the hollow of his chest. A loud light rippled through the cloud. Keal looked around furiously, he couldn't determine what it was, but he knew danger was close. 
 The wolf inside him snarled and shrank back, ears flat, teeth bared in terror and then came a voice. 
“The thread is cut, but the loom still weaves.”
The voice came from within, wrapped with certainty and mockery. 
Keal’s mouth went dry. His gaze darted to the ash where Darius had been, to the shattered sword, to the ruins of the ridge but it was useless. This voice wasn’t bound to flesh.
Lila stiffened, her eyes flying open, wide with terror. She had heard it too.
Then the mark on her neck flared up again, hotter than it had ever been and she screamed out loud. 
Her whole body jerked, convulsing, the pain tearing through her raw and merciless. Keal tried to hold her steady, to press her against him, but then his chest ignited.
Not from Darius’s wound. From within.
He gasped, clutching his chest. Fire burned from within him, he could feel it in his veins. They burned into him, carving deep, alive with a pulse that wasn’t his own.
“No, no, no”, he cried out horrified. He knew what was happening. His claws sank into his chest, spilling out blood, but the Mark only pulsed brighter, feeding on his pain. 
The laugh grew, echoing through the stone, through the night.
“The vessel is chosen. The curse lives on.”
Keal’s vision slowly blurred out. His body was covered with blood and sweat. “No! Not him too!” he cried. 
But the truth was already in him. He could feel it rooted in his heart, chaining itself to his soul. The curse had not died with Darius. It had only shifted. And it had chosen his son. 
Lila clutched his arm, eyes wide with panic and pain. “Keal!” she cried, her voice hoarse, broken. “The baby—he’s coming—”
Her words snapped him back. The fire in his chest was unbearable, but he forced his body to move, to focus on her.
Her belly tightened again, harder than before. Blood streaked her thighs. She sobbed, curling against him as another contraction ripped through her.
Keal’s hands trembled as he lifted her, settling her against the least-broken stretch of ground. He had no midwife, no healer, no shelter—just himself, just his bloodied hands and a wolf that howled with fear inside him.
But he couldn’t let her see that. He couldn’t fail her now.
“You can do this,” he whispered fiercely, brushing damp hair from her face. “You’ve fought storms, you’ve carried fire inside you. You can bring him here.”
She gripped his arm so hard her nails cut through skin. “Don’t—don’t let it take him,” she choked out.
Keal’s chest seared, his new Mark pulsing violently in answer to her words. He swallowed the scream clawing at his throat and forced himself to nod. “I won’t. I swear it.”
The night stretched long. Every minute was an eternity of screams, blood, and the storm inside them both. Keal’s hands shook as he guided her, whispered to her, and begged her to breathe. His claws tore his own palms open just to keep from losing control, from letting the wolf take her terror as prey.
And then—
A cry.
Thin, piercing, alive.
The sound cut through everything—the silence, the laugh, the storm. Keal’s breath broke as he stared down at the small, blood-slick body in his trembling hands. His son.
He let out a sob, raw and unguarded, pressing the child against Lila’s chest. She cradled him weakly, her tears spilling over his dark hair. For a moment, for the span of a heartbeat, there was only them.
Alive, together, and whole. 
But the silence did not hold.
The laugh returned, colder, sharper, threading through the child’s thin wail. Keal’s Mark blazed in his chest, silver fire scorching through him until his vision went white. He looked down in horror and saw the faintest glow answering from the baby’s tiny skin—like the echo of a rune, half-formed, pulsing in rhythm with his own.
His blood ran cold.
The curse had not only marked him.
It had reached their son.