MasukSAPHRA'S POV“I didn’t bring you here just to tell you this,” Eira says quietly.I turn toward her.She’s kneeling now, her movements deliberate, careful. From within the folds of her cloak, she pulls something free.A scroll, old and worn.The edges are frayed, the parchment aged to a deep, uneven gold. Even from where I stand, I can feel the weight of it, like it carries more than ink and memory.“This,” she says, her voice lowering slightly, “is the last record I have.”My pulse quickens.“The most important one.”I step closer despite myself.“What is it?”Her gaze lifts to meet mine.“The truth you’ve been circling since the moment you were born.”A chill slides down my spine.“Unroll it,” I say.She studies me for a moment, measuring perhaps, whether I’m ready.I’m not but that doesn’t matter anymore.Nothing does except the truth.Slowly, she unrolls the scroll.The parchment crackles softly as it opens, revealing lines of ink that have somehow survived time, war, and silence.
SAPHRA’S POVI can still feel it.The vision clings to me like smoke in my lungs. My chest rises and falls fast, t and the forest around us feels wrong, it's too quiet and normal, like the world hasn’t just been ripped open and stitched back together in a way that makes no sense.My father’s face.Lucien’s grief.The shadow.I drag a hand through my hair, now pacing without realising it. My boots crunch against dry leaves, grounding me in something real, something solid, but it doesn’t help. Nothing helps.“They were victims…” I whisper, the words cracking apart as they leave me. “Both of them.”Eira doesn’t respond immediately. She watches me patiently, knowing there’s nothing to do.“Yes, that’s what you saw,” she says at last.I stop pacing, turning to face her sharply. “That’s not just what I saw. That’s what it was, isn’t it?”Her silence is answer enough.“What does it actually want?”Eira’s expression changes.Something darker settles into her gaze, something grim and unyieldin
SAPHRA’S POV“I need to show you something else.”Eira’s voice is quieter now, but it carries a weight that makes my chest tighten. The fire between us has burned low, reduced to glowing embers, and the forest feels too still.I don’t like it.I don’t like the way her eyes hold mine, steady and unflinching, as if she’s already decided something for me.“What kind of something?” I ask, my voice sharper than I intend.“A truth you may not accept unless you see it yourself. Something you may have suspected for a while.”My stomach twists.“I think I have seen enough,” I say. “You’ve told me what that thing is. That’s....”“It’s not enough,” she cuts in, not harshly, but firmly. “Not for what you carry. Not for what you believe.”Her words land harder than they should but she’s right.I fold my arms, more to ground myself than anything else. “What are you planning to do?”“A vision ritual,” she says simply.My pulse spikes.“Again.”The word leaves me instantly, instinctively.I take a st
EIRA’S POV“I wasn’t always this…” I tell Saphra, my voice steady even as the past rises like a storm beneath my ribs. The fire between us crackles softly, but it does nothing to warm the cold memory curling through me. “I was once a High Seer of the inner court. I was trusted, revered and respected.”Saphra doesn’t interrupt. She watches me with those sharp, searching eyes of hers.“Back then,” I continue, “the elders spoke of the Noctrya as myth. A cautionary tale told to keep young wolves obedient. A shadow used to explain why peace never lasted between packs.”I let out a quiet breath, shaking my head.“But I saw patterns they refused to see.”Wars that ignited too easily. Alliances that crumbled overnight. Hatred that burned hotter than it should, as if… encouraged.Cultivated.“I spent years studying old texts,” I say, my gaze drifting past the fire, seeing stone walls and flickering torchlight instead of trees. “Scrolls buried so deep in the archives even the council had forgo
SAPHRA'S POV Lucien’s scent still clings to the air.I’m standing in the center of his chambers, my thoughts still tangled in everything when something cold brushes the inside of my mind.Saphra.I gasp.The voice is clear.Stronger than before.Eira.It floods my mind so suddenly I stagger back a step, my hand flying to my temple as if I can physically block it out. My pulse spikes, breath catching in my throat.“Eira?” I whisper aloud, even though I know she’ll hear me without sound.You must come. Now.Urgency threads through her voice, sharp and unyielding.My body goes still.“What happened?” I ask, my thoughts forming faster than words.They are searching the old paths. I can not stay there. I have moved. You must follow carefully.Images flash behind my eyes.Not quite visions.Directions.Fragments of forest, twisted roots, a fallen tree split down the middle, a narrow stream cutting through stone. The path forms in my mind like a map I’ve always known but somehow forgotten.
SAPHRA'S POV The courtyard holds its breath.I feel it in the way the air presses against my skin, in the way every wolf within sight backs away without being told. No one wants to be here for what comes next.Lucien doesn’t say a word.He just looks at me.“Everyone out.”His voice cuts through the silence like a blade.No one hesitates. They scatter immediately, retreating as if the ground beneath us might split open. Marcus pauses for half a heartbeat, his eyes flicking between me and Lucien. Then he bows his head once and leaves.Just like that, I’m alone with him.The shift in the air is immediate.He doesn’t approach right away. Instead, he turns and starts walking toward the palace doors.“Come,” he says.Not a request, a command.I follow not because I want to but I need answers and right now, he’s the only one who might have them.~~~His chambers are colder than I remember or maybe it’s just him.The moment the door closes behind us, the sound echoes too loudly in the spac
SAPHRA'S POV By the third day, I know the exact sound Lucien makes when pain wakes him.It’s not a cry. It’s a breath, so sharp, pulled too fast into lungs that refuse weakness. I hear it through the door before I enter his chambers, the sound threading straight through my bones as if the bond its
LUCIEN’S POV The palace sleeps around me, but rest refuses to touch my mind. I sit alone at my desk, candlelight flickering over parchment and ink, surrounded by the quiet weight of command. Reports lie stacked in careful order, each page another reminder that power is never absolute only borrowe
MARCUS’S POVI tell myself the excuse is sufficient.Security protocols are always sufficient. No one questions them openly, not when they come from me. Still, even as I walk the familiar corridor toward Saphra’s quarters, the words feel thin in my mouth, like a poorly forged document that might cr
LUCIEN’S POV The fever does not break. It lingers, stubborn and unyielding. Two more days stretch into something that feels less like time and more like endurance, a siege measured not in hours or sunrises, but in the heat beneath my palm and the hitch in her breathing when the pain spikes. I d







