🩵Ronan🩵The blast sent Ronan to his knees.For a breathless moment, everything was light and heat and the deafening hum of magic gone wild. His ears rang. The air tasted like ash and iron. When the dust finally settled, he scrambled forward, panic clawing at his chest."Talia!"She lay crumpled where the spell had struck. Her body was still. Smoke curled from the ground around her. He reached her in seconds, hands skimming her shoulders, her face. Her pulse fluttered beneath his fingers. Alive. Barely.A roar erupted behind him—the Beast.The creature had fully transformed now. Tall and terrible, eyes burning gold, wings flaring wide. The sigils across his skin glowed with Seraphina’s magic, resisting her command with sheer will.Ronan turned, shielding Talia’s body with his own."Enough!" he shouted.Seraphina descended slowly, her feet touching the Hollow's ground like a queen descending from the heavens. Her eyes burned with fury, but her face remained eerily calm."She was in th
🩵Ronan🩵The torchlight flickered along the mountain corridor walls, casting sharp shadows across the weathered stone as Ronan paced the war chamber. Maps lay scattered across the central table, their edges curling with age. Battle plans, territorial wards, ancient bloodlines—all laid bare beneath his gloved hands.He could still feel the echo of the creature’s magic from earlier. Whatever had reached for Talia—it wasn’t just Seraphina. It was something far older. And now it was awake.“You felt it too,” Elia said, stepping into the chamber, arms folded across her chest. Her expression was unreadable, but the tension in her posture gave her away. “Did it speak to you?”Ronan gave a sharp nod. “Not in words. But it made its intent clear—it wants her.”“And you believe it’s the same creature from the cursed wood?”“No,” he said darkly. “It’s worse. That thing in the wood was a fragment, a shard of power. What reached through the wards today was something whole.”Elia flinched. “You’re
🩵Ronan🩵The night had grown heavy with silence. Not the peace of a world asleep, but the breath-holding quiet before a storm’s first roar.Ronan paced the stone corridor outside the meeting chamber, every step echoing like a war drum. His skin still hummed from Talia’s touch, the memory of her fingers laced with his—fragile and yet defiant. It lingered like a promise, or maybe a warning.Elia stood nearby, watching him with crossed arms. “You’ve been pacing for nearly fifteen minutes,” she said. “You’ll wear a path in the floor.”“I’m trying to think,” Ronan muttered. “That Seer’s words… They don’t sit right.”“They rarely do,” she replied dryly. “Cryptic riddles and half-truths—classic seer nonsense.”“She saw the flame.” Ronan paused, jaw clenched. “Talia is the flame. And something’s coming for her.”Elia’s face darkened. “Then you need to prepare her. No more coddling. If she’s going to survive this, she needs to fight.”Ronan nodded grimly.He found her in the eastern courtyard
🩷Talia🩷 The firelight painted warm gold across the stone walls, flickering shadows dancing like ghosts of old. Talia sat on the edge of the bed Ronan had insisted she take, wrapped in a heavy wool blanket that still didn’t stop the chill in her blood. It wasn’t the cold. It was what she remembered—the Beast’s breath against her neck, the weight of its claw, the sensation of being watched by something ancient and hungry even before it attacked. She pressed trembling fingers to the base of her throat, half expecting to find blood still drying. But there was none. Only a faint soreness and bruising. A mark. A claim? She pulled the collar of her sweater higher. Footsteps echoed softly in the hall, and her body tensed before she recognized the gait—heavy, purposeful. Ronan. He stopped outside her door. She waited, expecting a knock, expecting something… but he didn’t enter. Just silence. Then: “Talia?” His voice, rougher than usual, carried something restrained in it. “I’m awake,
🪄Seraphina🪄The ritual chamber was alive with heat, with hunger. Black runes pulsed beneath her bare feet as smoke coiled along the stone floor like living fingers. Above her, the great bloodstone glowed a dark crimson, suspended in the air by raw magic. Cracks had begun to form along its facets—fractures of power. It was almost ready.Seraphina stood before the altar, her robes damp with sweat, hair clinging to her back. The summoning circle pulsed in rhythm with her heart, steady and sure.She had waited lifetimes for this.Behind her, her younger sister watched from the shadows—Sylara. Wide-eyed, tense, her hands clutched the obsidian doorway like it might keep her anchored.“This isn’t what we agreed to,” Sylara said quietly.Seraphina didn’t look back. “It’s exactly what we agreed to. You just didn’t understand the price.”“You said we’d reclaim the bloodline. That we’d be strong again. You didn’t say we’d wake... that thing.”Seraphina smiled. “Power never rises quietly, littl
🩵RONAN🩵Ronan paced outside the healer’s quarters, his boots crunching against the gravel path as he rubbed the tension from his jaw. Inside, Cael lay unconscious, his body trembling from the remnants of Seraphina’s magic still bleeding from his veins. The scent of old blood and fire lingered in the air—proof of just how close they’d come to losing everything.His pack was shaken.And Talia…He turned toward the balcony above the west wing where her shadow passed behind a curtain. She hadn’t come down since they returned. Elia said she needed rest. That she was processing.Ronan knew better. She was afraid—of her power, of what it meant, of what it was turning her into.He understood that fear too well.“Ronan.” Elia’s voice called him back from the edge. She approached with her usual bluntness, but her eyes were softer than usual. “The council’s demanding a report. They want to know if the creature was a one-off, or the beginning of something worse.”“It’s both,” he said simply.Sh