Chapter 21: The Whispers of the Vault

The air inside the Royal Treasury of the Blackwood line didn't smell like dust or decay. Instead, it was thick with the scent of ozone, ancient iron, and the sharp, crystalline vibration of a thousand years of hoarded magic. As the massive, wolf-headed stone doors groaned open, Scarlett felt a phantom pulse in her own chest, as if the Lunar Key fragment within her was greeting a long-lost sibling.

Caleb walked beside her, his hand resting possessively on her shoulder. Since their return from the South, his aura had become so dense that the shadows in the room seemed to bend toward him. He wasn't just a King anymore; he was a living force of nature.

"This is the heart of the North, Scarlett," Caleb rumbled, his voice echoing off the vaulted ceilings. "Everything my ancestors fought for, every drop of blood spilled for the crown, is reflected in these walls. And tonight, it is yours to explore."

Fenris and the other guards remained outside the threshold. The treasury was a sacred ground, accessible only to the Alpha and his chosen mate. Scarlett stepped onto the floor of white, polished marble—and froze.

The sensation of the stone beneath her feet was... familiar. Too familiar.

"Caleb," she whispered, her gaze darting across the room. "The layout... the way the light hits the central dais... it’s exactly like the diagram in my grandfather’s scrolls."

"The scrolls from your past life?" Caleb asked, his golden eyes narrowing. He didn't mock her; he had learned that her "delusions" were often premonitions.

Scarlett didn't answer. She was drawn to a small, unassuming glass case in the far corner, tucked away from the piles of gold and jewel-encrusted armor. Inside sat a single object: an ornate, bronze compass-like device, its needle made of a sliver of dark wood.

Her breath hitched. She reached out, her fingers trembling as she touched the glass. "This is the Stellar Navigator. It was stolen from my family’s temple three hundred years before I was born."

"Impossible," Caleb murmured, standing behind her. "That relic was found in the wreckage of the First War, long before the Thorne family even existed in the South."

"Caleb, look at the base." Scarlett pointed to a microscopic inscription in the bronze. It wasn't in any language of this world. It was in the ancient Taoist script of her true home.

The realization hit her like a physical blow. Her transmigration wasn't an accident. She hadn't just 'fallen' into the body of the villainess. Her soul had been pulled here because the Blackwood line and her own lineage were intertwined by a debt that spanned across worlds and centuries.

Suddenly, the Stellar Navigator flared with a brilliant, white light. The needle spun frantically before snapping toward Scarlett.

"The beacon," she whispered, her eyes wide with terror. "It’s not just calling the Order of the Black Sun. It’s opening the gate."

The ground beneath the Stronghold shuddered again, but this wasn't an avalanche. A massive, spectral portal began to tear open in the center of the treasury, smelling of salt air and the incense of a world Scarlett had thought she’d never see again.

From the void, a voice boomed—cold, ancient, and chillingly familiar. "The stray soul has been found. Return the Key, or witness the end of the Moon."

Caleb let out a thunderous roar, his wolf shadow manifesting instantly, its fangs baring at the portal. He pulled Scarlett behind him, his body a shield of silver muscle. "No one takes what is mine," he growled toward the void. "Not the gods, and certainly not the ghosts of a dead world."

But as the shadows began to pour from the rift, Scarlett realized that her fight for survival had just entered its most lethal phase. She wasn't just a pawn in a novel anymore; she was the bridge between two worlds, and both sides wanted her dead.