Chapter 4 – The Message in the Blood

The air shifted the moment the spy crossed the border.

Theron was already waiting by the edge of the high pass, where jagged rocks sliced the wind like blades. Aria stood beside him, arms crossed, her cloak billowing. She hadn't been seen in over a month, and the stories about her disappearance were already spreading like fire through the territories.

A Nightwind insignia glinted on the stranger’s collar, a crescent moon split by a single silver claw.

He was young. Nervous. Barely more than a scout. And bleeding.

"Your Luna has returned," he said, dropping to one knee before Aria.

She didn’t move.

"I’m no longer your Luna."

"Maybe not by title," the scout replied, voice shaking, "but by right, you still are."

Theron raised a brow. "Why come here, boy? This mountain takes lives."

The scout glanced up, wide-eyed. “Because Kaelen doesn’t know I’m here. And if he finds out, he’ll have me executed.”

Aria’s expression didn’t soften. “Then speak. And quickly.”

The scout hesitated, then blurted, “It’s about Serenya. She’s not who she says she is.”

Inside the temple, Aria paced, fingers twitching at her side. The scout sat by the fire, cradling a steaming mug of bitterleaf tea, face pale. Theron stood at the edge of the room, silent as always.

“She arrived four moons before Kaelen returned,” the scout explained. “She didn’t just find him. She was led to him. Like something… called her there.”

“What kind of something?” Aria asked.

“She never shifts,” the scout said. “No one’s seen her wolf. Ever. She claims it’s shy.”

Aria snorted. “That’s not how our kind works.”

“There’s more,” he continued. “She… speaks in tongues when she sleeps. Ancient ones. And sometimes, when she’s angry, the lights flicker. Small things die.”

Aria's stomach clenched. She remembered the strange pull, the way the air turned wrong around Serenya. As if her soul didn’t fit her skin.

“Why are you telling me this?” she asked.

“Because I watched you lead us when Kaelen was too broken to stand. I watched you shield our young, bury our dead, heal our wounded. And now, they whisper that Serenya will be crowned Luna at the full moon. But something inside me knows, that woman isn't of the Goddess. She’s something else.”

Aria leaned in. “Do they suspect me? Do they believe I’ll return?”

“They hope you won’t,” the scout said. “They think you’re too broken.”

She smiled then a sharp, cold thing.

“Let them.”

After the scout fell asleep, Aria stood before the cracked mirror again.

This time, the reflection wasn’t armored.

It was her. Wounded. Weary. But her eyes glowed. not with fury, but with clarity.

She turned to Theron.

“You knew Serenya wasn’t normal.”

“I suspected,” he said. “But the rest was yours to see.”

“She’s not a rogue,” Aria said slowly. “She’s a vessel.”

“Of something older. Something hungry.”

Aria exhaled. “A demon?”

Theron nodded once. “Not the kind that howls. The kind that smiles.”

The next morning, Theron presented Aria with a test.

In the cavern beyond the temple, deep within the mountain’s spine, lay an ancient altar. A stone slab covered in frost, with runes scorched into its surface.

“Three choices,” he said. “Three paths. One to power. One to pain. One to truth.”

She frowned. “And I choose blindly?”

“No,” he said. “You choose with what you’ve become.”

On the altar, three tokens appeared — one red stone, glowing like fire; one black feather, humming with cold magic; and one shard of silver glass.

Aria stood before them, the mountain silent around her.

The red stone pulsed with vengeance. The feather whispered of vanishing, of leaving the world behind. But the glass shimmered faintly, and in its reflection, she saw Kaelen’s face… and behind him, a shadow with Serenya’s smile.

She reached out.

Her fingers brushed the shard of glass.

And pain shot through her arm.

Images poured into her, flashes of another world. Of wolves with hollow eyes. Of a throne made of bone and silk. Of a child crying beneath a sky torn open by lightning.

Then… nothing.

Theron caught her as she collapsed.

“You chose truth,” he said softly. “Now it will chase you.”

That night, the scout tried to flee.

Aria found him near the mountain’s edge, struggling with his saddlebag.

“I can’t stay,” he said. “I wasn’t followed, but if they track me, they’ll find you.”

“Then let them,” Aria said, her voice steel.

But the scout looked at her, really looked, and whispered, “There’s more.”

He swallowed hard.

“I heard Serenya in the forest two nights before I left. She wasn’t alone.”

“Who was she with?”

He hesitated. “She called it Master. I didn’t see it. I ran.”

Aria felt her stomach twist.

“What else?”

“She… she said your name. She said you had to be broken. That Kaelen had to choose her.”

A long silence fell.

“She wants you gone. Not just from the pack,” he whispered. “From the world.”

Aria looked out over the mountain ridge, where the clouds churned like a brewing storm.

“She failed,” she said. “And now I’m coming back.”