Chapter 3 Rehitt's Queit Exile

The stars burned brighter that night, spilling across the sky like shattered glass. Their light dripped through the tangled crowns of the trees, casting silver patches across the forest floor. The woods stretched endlessly, deep and quiet, a place where time seemed reluctant to move. In that silence, the whispers of fate always felt louder.

Far from the kingdom's firelit courts, in a lonely cabin hugged by moss and creeping vines, Rehitt lived in exile. To the world, she was a ghost-child, a mark of bad fortune best hidden away. To herself, she was simply forgotten.

Her days were simple, carved into small rituals of survival. She gathered herbs at dawn, when the dew made every leaf taste sharper, every stem easier to pull from the ground. She stitched wounds on wild animals that stumbled too close to her cabin, their eyes wide with the same fear she carried in her chest. She boiled roots into bitter teas that kept fever away. Life here was made of small duties, small comforts, and silence that could swallow her whole if she let it.

But Rehitt was not fragile.She was strong.Her hands were steady from years of healing, her eyes sharper than most hunters who ever passed through these woods. She could tell the difference between the crack of a branch under a rabbit's foot and the heavier press of a wolf within a heartbeat. Still, no amount of skill dulled the edge of loneliness. It clung to her like smoke, never letting go.

The whispers never left her either. They had followed her since childhood, growing louder the longer she stayed alone. Sometimes they drifted from the trees like soft voices carried on the wind. Other times they came from inside her own skull, curling into her thoughts as if they were her own.

The cursed child will unseat the crown.

Born in shadows, destined to break them.

She hated them. She hated how they seemed to know her better than she knew herself.

That evening, the forest felt different. She noticed it first when the owls stopped calling. The air pressed heavier, thick with a strange tension that made her skin prickle. She sat by her small wooden table, her hair unbound, the soft strands catching the starlight that bled through the window. Her hands twisted around a cup of herbal tea, but the warmth did nothing to chase the sudden chill crawling down her spine.

Her cabin was tiny,one room, a hearth, a table, and a narrow bed tucked in the corner. Yet tonight, it felt smaller, as if the dark itself was pressing against the walls, hungry to get in.

She set the cup down, the soft thud louder than it should have been.

The silence pressed harder.

Rehitt's mind wandered, as it often did in moments like this. She thought of the life she might have lived if she wasn't exiled. Would she have worn silk instead of patched cloth? Would her laughter have echoed in palace halls instead of being eaten by these woods? Would someone have spoken her name with love instead of fear?

But fate never asked for permission. It had carved her path long before she could walk it.

She rose from her chair and moved to the shelves where bundles of dried herbs hung. Her fingers brushed over them absentmindedly, but her thoughts were elsewhere. She couldn't stop thinking of the Oracle's prophecy she had overheard years ago. The words never faded.

The falling star will mark the cursed child. And with her hands, a kingdom will bleed.

Rehitt closed her eyes, fighting the familiar ache in her chest. She had never wanted kingdoms. She had never wanted crowns or blood. All she wanted was peace, the kind that wasn't borrowed in small fragments but lived in whole.

A sharp sound snapped her from her thoughts.

A branch cracking. Close.

Her heart lurched, thudding so hard she thought the sound might betray her. She stilled, listening. The woods beyond her cabin held their breath. No owls. No rustle of leaves. Nothing.

Her fingers curled around the wooden spoon she had left by the hearth. It wasn't a weapon, not really, but it was something to hold, something to steady her shaking hands.

Another sound. This time, footsteps. Slow. Deliberate.

Her breath caught.

She backed toward the table, her eyes fixed on the door. The rough wood, once so familiar, now felt like paper,thin, fragile, unable to keep out what pressed against it.

Her mind spun with possibilities. Bandits? Hunters? Someone sent by the crown? She had lived in hiding for so long, but hiding never lasted forever.

The footsteps stopped.

Then came the knock.

Not a timid tap, but a solid, measured sound. Three times, heavy enough to make the frame quiver.

Her throat went dry.

No one ever came here. No one even knew she was alive, except for those who wanted her erased from memory. And yet, here was someone, something, on the other side of her door.

She stayed frozen, every muscle pulled tight, her lungs refusing to draw air. The silence after the knock was worse than the sound itself. It stretched and stretched, wrapping around her like rope.

Rehitt's mind screamed at her to stay still, to wait until whatever it was left. But another part of her,a buried, restless part she rarely let surface, wanted to answer. To see. To know.

Her hand trembled as she reached for the latch.

The whispers returned, slithering through her skull, clearer than ever.

Open the door, cursed child.

Your fate waits on the other side.

Her chest rose and fell with sharp breaths. Every instinct told her this was the moment her exile ended. This was the moment everything she feared,and everything she secretly longed for,would bleed into her life.

Her fingers touched the latch.

And then,

The door shook violently under another knock, harder, hungrier, as if whoever stood there no longer had patience for silence.

Rehitt staggered back, her heart leaping into her throat. The cup on the table rattled, spilling tea across the wood.

The whispers rose into a fevered chorus inside her head.

He comes. He comes. He comes.

Her eyes locked on the door, wide with terror and something else she couldn't name.

The night was no longer quiet.

And her exile was no longer safe