SISTER'S BETRAYAL pt 3

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Sister’s Betrayal – Part 3: Ashes in the Garden

By Ernest Leonard Sr.

The scent of burning sage hung heavy in the garden, though it did little to cleanse the air of its tension. Cracks splintered the sacred circle, the same one where the sisters once danced barefoot under the moonlight, whispering old chants and secrets. Now, the soil bore the scorch of broken oaths.

Liora stood still in the center of the ruin, her hands trembling. Her cloak clung to her, damp with sweat and smoke. The High Priestess stared at her with the cold stillness of judgment, her silver circlet catching the firelight.

“I never meant for Elowen to be hurt,” Liora whispered, her voice barely rising above the wind.

The Priestess’s face hardened. “You invoked blood magic,” she said, her tone sharp as obsidian. “Jealousy is not an excuse, child. You let it poison the rite. You severed the balance.”

Behind them, under the sheltering limbs of the old Rowan tree, Elowen lay still. Her aura, once radiant, was now barely visible — flickering like the last embers of a dying flame. Nessa, her familiar owl, circled above, keening a mournful cry that echoed into the trees.

But Liora no longer wept.

Something had shifted in her.

“I saw the truth in the flame,” she said, her eyes distant. “Elowen wasn’t chosen because she was worthy… she was chosen because she was afraid. She feared the darkness. I never did.”

The Priestess took an uneasy step back. “You speak like one who has been touched by shadow.”

Liora met her gaze, calm and defiant. “No. I speak as one born of the flame. You taught us about balance — light and dark, moon and sun — but you never let me explore the dark. That was always reserved for Elowen. You called it caution. I see it now for what it was — favoritism masked as fear.”

The earth beneath her feet rumbled. Cracks spread like lightning across the stones of the circle. From deep within the soil, tendrils of violet and ember-red light rose, winding around her ankles and up her legs like serpents. Her hair lifted in the sudden wind, and her eyes glowed with something older than the coven itself.

“Elowen will live,” Liora said, her voice echoing with strange resonance. “But I will be cast out — not for betrayal, but for power. So be it.”

Before anyone could speak, before the High Priestess could form a spell to bind her, Liora raised her arms. A sudden cyclone of wind and flame erupted around her, lifting stones, petals, and ash into the sky. In a blink, she was gone — vanished into smoke and sparks — leaving only silence, scorched earth, and a chill that would not lift for days.

The garden would never be the same again.

But long after the circle was abandoned, legends began to spread — stories of a witch wandering the borderlands, neither of light nor of shadow. A teacher to the outcast. A guide for those who refused to bow to tradition.

They say she walks still, barefoot and burning.


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EKLSR


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