Chapter Twenty-Eight: Blood on the BladeThe Moon’s Eye Temple was a furnace of flame and fury.Steel rang as Rowan’s blade clashed with Darius’s, their movements fast and brutal, like twin storms locked in a deadly dance. Sparks flew as iron met iron, the enchanted weapons pulsing with old magic — one born of the Elders’ control, the other of rebellion and fire.Lyra stood frozen for only a moment, her eyes wide with heartbreak and disbelief. Rowan — the boy in her mother's bedtime stories, the nameless savior from the shadows — was real. And now, he was the one trying to kill her.“Stop!” she shouted, her voice cutting through the roar of battle. “Rowan, please — this isn’t who you are!”Rowan’s eyes flickered — not with doubt, but with pain.“You don’t know what I’ve become,” he said darkly. “You don’t want to.”With a surge of energy, he slammed the hilt of his blade into Darius’s chest. Darius crashed to the ground, winded but alive.Lyra didn’t wait. She stepped forward, her pal
Chapter Twenty-Seven: Echoes Beneath the Moon’s EyeThe journey to the Moon’s Eye was not marked on any map. It couldn’t be. The temple existed between worlds—hidden by enchantment, protected by blood oaths older than the packs themselves. Only the chosen, or the cursed, could find it.Lyra was both.The deeper she and Darius traveled into the Northern Wastes, the colder the world became. The trees here were thin and silver, their leaves sharp as blades, their trunks humming with ancient power. The wind whispered secrets in voices not entirely human.“I’ve never seen anything like this,” Darius murmured as he scanned the crooked trees surrounding them.“That’s because this place was never meant for mortal eyes,” Lyra said, her voice quiet. “My mother told me stories. Of a temple buried in moonlight, where fate is written in fire and stone.”Darius glanced at her. “And you think we’ll find answers there?”Lyra didn’t answer. She didn’t need to.The mark on her collarbone was glowing ag
Chapter Twenty-Six: The Silence of EldersThe Obsidian Pack’s Hall of Elders was carved into the cliffside like a relic from a forgotten age—black stone, silver accents, and torches that never died. Only the most powerful voices in the shifter world were allowed within its walls. For years, Lyra had dreamed of standing here—not as a supplicant, not as an exile, but as a warrior with a voice of her own.Now she stood at the center of the chamber, every eye on her.And she didn’t flinch.“The girl returns,” sneered Elder Vorek, his fur-lined mantle heavy with silver rank. His ancient eyes glinted beneath the crown of thorns woven from sacred ashwood. “And now she thinks herself a flame reborn.”Lyra raised her chin. “I don’t think so. I know it.”The dozen elders murmured. Some with interest. Others with disdain.“I stand here as Lyra Vale. Daughter of Elira of the Celestial Blood. Survivor of betrayal. Heir to the Moonbreaker line.”More murmurs, sharper now.Elder Maelin, the only wom
Chapter Twenty-Five: Blood of the MoonbreakerThe world had become a blur of heat, voices, and pain.Lyra drifted through darkness, her limbs suspended in nothing, her thoughts shattered like glass. Something pulsed deep inside her chest—like a drumbeat in reverse, drawing her inward instead of pushing her forward. For a moment, she wasn’t Lyra. She wasn’t a daughter, a warrior, a betrayed mate.She was fire.She was blood.She was the end and the beginning.A voice echoed through the void.“You are not the first. But you will be the last.”Her eyes snapped open.The night sky had turned violet, fractured by lightning that cracked in unnatural lines overhead. She lay in a circle of burned earth, her body steaming, her pulse thrumming like a war drum. Around her, wolves from the Ironfang and Obsidian packs watched in stunned silence.Killian was crouched beside her, eyes frantic.“You’re awake,” he breathed, brushing hair from her face. “You were out for minutes. You started burning fr
Chapter Twenty-Four: Fire Born, Blood BoundThe forest trembled with the echoes of Seraphine’s return.Lyra staggered to her feet, her knees wobbling beneath her weight. The air sizzled with her energy—too much, too fast—like lightning searching for a place to strike. Her senses had become unnaturally sharp; she could hear the leaves shaking miles away, feel the heartbeat of the soil, taste the crackle of ozone on her tongue.Killian stood beside her, tense, wide-eyed, torn between awe and terror. “What just happened to you?”“I walked the fire,” Lyra rasped. “And it walked through me.”Her hands curled into fists at her sides, and for the first time, the flames didn’t devour her—they bowed to her.Seraphine descended slowly through the rift in the sky, her body wreathed in shadows. She no longer looked like a disgraced Luna. Her power had morphed into something darker, unholy. Her ounce-silver eyes now burned black, and her voice echoed as if spoken by a thousand ghosts.“Lyra,” she
Chapter Twenty-Three: The Flame WithinLyra awoke gasping.But there was no breath.No air.Just searing heat and the sound of her own heartbeat echoing like a war drum in her ears.She was no longer in the forest. No longer in the Forgotten Hollow. Instead, she stood in the center of a vast chamber of flame and obsidian, where the walls pulsed like living veins, and the floor glowed with ancient runes too old to be named. Her skin shimmered with a faint golden light, her eyes glowing faintly in the crimson haze.The world around her was alive—and watching.“Where… am I?” she whispered, her voice swallowed by the silence.“You are in the Forge of Souls,” a voice boomed around her.She turned sharply.A figure stepped from the fire—neither man nor beast, but something in between. A towering entity with molten eyes and a cloak of embers. A being of legend. The Warden of Trials.“Only those chosen by the blood of the First Flame can survive here,” the Warden said. “You are here to be tes