Years did not pass over Elena like wind over grass, but like an axe through aged flesh. She grew, but did not rise. She sank—into herself, into a world that refused to accept her. At twelve, she was too beautiful to be left alone. At fourteen, too silent to be loved. At sixteen, she was already a legend. But one not spoken aloud—only in whispers and backward-made signs of the cross.
Her beauty was not sweet. It was violence. Alabaster skin with bluish veins, eyes like two cracks in the night, lips that seemed bitten from a forbidden fruit. She walked like a vision—straight, unhurried, as if time itself had to move aside. Men followed her with their eyes but didn't dare touch her. Once, a young man threw her a flower. The next day, they found his fingers embedded in the barn wall. The girl had said nothing. She had only looked.
The women? They hated her. Not just for her beauty. But because they felt she saw everything. She saw who they truly were. Saw their betrayals. Their weaknesses. Their buried dreams. Elena looked at them like a judge waiting for the final spark before pronouncing the verdict. And she did. Sometimes with a glance. Other times with a silence that cut deeper than any insult.
Her father hadn't changed. He had only aged in his hatred. If before he hit her on impulse, now he did it methodically. Coldly. Once, he cut off her braids with a bread knife. Another time, he tried to sell her to a traveling merchant. Elena escaped. No one knows how. The merchant was never seen in the village again.
She had begun to feel that her place was no longer on the earth that spat at her with every step. She built an altar in the forest, with polished stones, eggshells, and ash. She spoke there in whispers. No one knows to whom. But the birds listened. And the wind.
In the evening, the girl would sit by the river. The water was still. Murky. It seemed to reflect nothing. Until one night. When she saw something in the water's reflection. The face in the water wasn't hers. It had her features—but altered. Sharper. More regal. Darker. More beautiful, if such a thing was possible. A small, ironic smile played on those lips. And in the eyes... in the eyes was the flame of another life.
Elena asked aloud:
"Are you me, or am I you?"
The reflection did not answer. But the water shimmered. As if laughing. That was when she felt, for the first time, true fear. Not of others. Of herself. And of the future.
After that night, her dreams grew clearer. She saw symbols. Spirals. Words written on walls. Birds with human eyes. It wasn't a boy—it was the demon. And now she saw him more clearly. He had a young, beautiful, almost angelic face, but the light in his eyes was old—old as the beginning of time. It seemed that every flicker of his gaze carried the memory of a world long burned. His shadow was heavy. His steps made no sound, but the dream vibrated when he appeared. He looked at her with that endless silence, as though he were a judge who had already pronounced the sentence but was waiting for the moment of execution.
In one dream, she drew a rune on her belly with blood— and woke up with a red mark still there.
She began to write. On walls. On stones. On her skin. Words in unknown languages. One day, she whispered a phrase she had never learned anywhere:
"Noli me tangere, quia ignem fero."
("Do not touch me, for I carry fire.")
And the fire came.
In a winter when snow fell for thirteen days and thirteen nights, Elena was seen only once. She was walking barefoot through the drifts, her hair unbound, and a white flame burning in her palm. No wax. No wick. Just pure fire. A woman who saw her lost her child that night. Another dreamed that her dead husband was calling her from the grave.
People no longer said "Elena." They said "her." "The fire." "The other one."
One night, a stranger passed through the village. He claimed to be a prophet. Elena offered him a piece of apple. He bit into it and began to bleed. Then he said:
"You are the forbidden fruit. But they are not worthy of Eden."
After he left, old Rava said:
"Whoever tastes her pays. In flesh. Or in salvation."
The year Elena turned seventeen, a woman brought her a sick child. Elena blew gently on the child's forehead and whispered:
"Exi, sed non sine pretio."
("Leave, but not without a price.")
The child was healed. But the woman dreamed of fire. And hanged herself three days later.
Elena had never belonged to the village. And the village knew it. She had become a living stain in the midst of a community that desired forgetfulness, not depth. Though she lived in isolation and was seen only a few times a year, she was felt as a threat. Her presence, her silent breath, seemed to suffocate the people's peace. As if her very existence poisoned their sleep, choked their prayers, soiled their mirrors.
And so they began to search for solutions. Not just exits. Not just prayers. Ideas. Solutions. Sacrifices. But without staining their hands with her blood. Too many feared that a direct death would bring something worse. So they decided to give her away. With evil hands but cold hearts.
And who could be more suited to destroy her than Baron Vornic—the cruelest man that had ever lived? A man said to have no soul, only an insatiable hunger. Marry her to him. Give her into his hands. That's how the village would rid itself of Elena—without guilt. Without blood. Without questions.
Someone said:
"Let's marry her off. Give her to the baron. So she doesn't burn us all."
Elena found out. And she didn't run. She didn't cry. She said nothing. She only spoke:
"Et ego non sum serva. Ego sum flamma."
("And I am not a slave. I am flame.")