Chapter 25: The Sins of the Lineage

 

The blizzard outside the Frostfall Divide howled like a pack of starving ghosts, but the atmosphere inside the tribe’s main longhouse was even colder. Scarlett stood by the central hearth, her eyes glowing with a faint, amber radiance as she scanned the captured cultists. Beside her, Caleb was a pillar of brooding silence, his golden eyes tracking every shiver of his disgraced kinsmen.

“They aren't just zealots, Caleb,” Scarlett whispered, her voice barely audible over the crackling fire. “Look at the way the light reflects in their pupils. It’s not a human or a wolf’s reflection. It’s a void.”

Cael, the fallen Alpha of the Frostfall tribe, let out a jagged laugh from his chains. “You think you’ve won, little witch? You’ve only delayed the inevitable. The King’s blood is the key, but his soul is the cage. The Old Gods aren't coming back—they never left.”

Caleb stepped forward, the floorboards groaning under his weight. He grabbed Cael by the throat, lifting him until their eyes were level. “You sacrificed a pup to a shadow, Cael. You traded the honor of the North for a lie. Tell me who gave you that dagger, or I will let the mountain winds tear the flesh from your bones.”

“The dagger... was a gift... from the ancestors,” Cael wheezed, a dark, oily liquid beginning to leak from his eyes.

Scarlett’s heart plummeted. She recognized that liquid—it was the same miasma she had seen during Caleb’s soul-coma. She rushed forward, her jade brush already out. “Caleb, let him go! He’s a vessel!”

Before Caleb could react, Cael’s body contorted in a way that defied biology. A black, spectral vapor erupted from his mouth, forming a silhouette that looked disturbingly like the Silver Wolf—but twisted, rotting, and crowned with thorns.

Scarlett slammed her brush into the air, drawing a Purification Pentagram. “By the iron of the earth and the light of the moon, dissolve!”

The golden barrier she created clashed with the black vapor, sending a shockwave through the room. The spectral entity let out a sound that wasn't a roar, but a thousand overlapping whispers.

“The King... is the lock... the Key... is the girl...”

With a final, violent hiss, the shadow vanished, leaving Cael’s body a hollow, lifeless shell. The longhouse fell into a deafening silence.

Caleb stood staring at the spot where the shadow had been, his hand trembling slightly. Scarlett noticed the black mark on his arm—the one he had gained in the treasury—was pulsing in time with the ritual’s residue.

“It said the King is the lock,” Scarlett murmured, her mind racing. “Caleb, your family didn't just rule the North. They were the ones who originally sealed the Void. But if the seal is weakening, it means the bloodline itself is failing.”

Caleb looked at her, his expression a mix of raw vulnerability and terrifying determination. “My father never spoke of a seal. He spoke of a burden. A legacy that would one day demand a price I wasn't prepared to pay.”

He pulled her into his arms, his grip almost desperate. “If my blood is the lock, Scarlett, then you are the only one with the power to keep it closed. But this isn't just about Julian or the Thorne family anymore. We are fighting the ghosts of my own name.”

Scarlett leaned into his chest, her spiritual senses picking up a new vibration from the Stellar Navigator in her bag. The truth of her transmigration and the secrets of the Blackwood line were converging into a single, lethal point.

“Then we find the source,” Scarlett vowed. “We don't wait for them to come to the Stronghold. We go into the Blackwood Ancestral Tombs. If your ancestors left a lock, they must have left a key—a real one.”

Caleb looked toward the darkening horizon, his golden eyes filled with a new, grim resolve. The hunt for survival had turned into a crusade for the soul of the world, and as they prepared to leave the Frostfall Divide, Scarlett knew that the next step would take them into the heart of the North’s darkest history.