LOGINThe last thing I remembered was Kael’s whisper.And promises, Aria… are meant to be kept.When I woke, the world was too bright.The air reeked of metal and ozone. A low hum rattled the floor beneath me — a mechanical heartbeat that didn’t belong to nature. I tried to move, but chains clinked around my wrists, cold and alive. They pulsed faintly with light, threads of runes shifting beneath the surface like serpents in glass.I was in a containment chamber — part prison, part altar. Every wall shimmered with sigils drawn in my blood.Kael’s doing. Always Kael.My voice cracked as I called out, “Where am I?”The answer came not from Kael, but from the soft chime of an automated door. A woman entered — her face human, her eyes not. Silver irises glowed with inhuman precision as she studied me.“Subject Aria Voss,” she said, her tone clinical. “Designation: Luna of the Lost Bloodline. You’ve been unconscious for seventy-two hours.”“Who are you?”“Dr. Selene Kaen. Kael’s chief geneticist
Smoke clung to the ruins of what once was shelter. The night bled red through the haze, and I could still taste ash on my tongue—bitter, hot, metallic. Betrayal burned deeper than any wound. I had trusted the face that turned on me, fought beside them, bled beside them—and now their blade had found my blood.I staggered through the wreckage, every step dragging the weight of exhaustion behind it. My power still flickered under my skin like trapped lightning, unstable and whispering things I didn’t want to hear. The whispers were older than me—older than the moon itself. They spoke of the bloodline, of oaths broken and bonds cursed.Auren’s presence was faint, buried somewhere deep in the noise. I couldn’t tell if it was real or if grief had finally learned to imitate his voice. But the pull toward him hadn’t vanished. It twisted through my veins, defying reason and distance.The forest ahead loomed black against a silver horizon. I stumbled into it, clutching the gash across my ribs.
The smoke still clung to my skin like a ghost. The explosion had ripped through the facility and left nothing but shuddering echoes and the bitter tang of metal in the air. I could still hear the faint crackle of collapsing steel and the soft hum of energy that hadn’t yet died. My hands trembled as I stared at them—scorched, trembling, alive. Too alive.I had done this.The realization burned deeper than the pain in my body. I didn’t know if the blood splattered across the floor belonged to Kael’s soldiers, to prisoners… or to the one person I had sworn I’d never hurt. The silence after power was worse than the blast itself. It was full of ghosts.I forced myself to move. My legs were weak, but instinct screamed louder than grief. I stumbled through the twisted wreckage, ash falling like black snow around me. The world outside was fractured—sirens wailing, drones slicing through the night sky. The humans had noticed the chaos now. Their machines had eyes everywhere.Something inside m
The red lights burned through my eyelids, searing the shape of my prison into my mind. Kael’s voice still echoed through the intercom, a ghost sliding down my spine. My body trembled—not with fear this time, but with something deeper. Power. It pulsed beneath my skin like a living thing, whispering for release.I opened my eyes. The walls around me shimmered, etched with sigils that hummed with faint energy. Glass, steel, and magic intertwined. Kael had learned from the last time. I pressed my palm against the wall, and static raced through me. My vision blurred for a second—then cleared. There, in the reflection, I saw what I had become. Shadows coiled around my body, faint golden veins pulsing through my arms like cracks of sunlight. I looked half-human, half-something else entirely.“You can’t cage what you don’t understand,” I whispered.The speakers hissed to life. “I understand enough,” Kael’s voice drawled. “Your blood is the missing piece, Aria. Do you even know what you are?”
The air still reeked of ozone and burning metal when I tore myself out of the ruins. My lungs screamed, my hands bled, but the cold rush of night was freedom. I stumbled through the fractured landscape—steel bones of the facility jutting from the dirt like a carcass. Every nerve buzzed with the ghost of Kael’s power. I could still feel him. Watching. Waiting. Hunting.Rain began to fall, cutting through the smoke in silver lines. I dragged my body forward, half-running, half-crawling through the debris until my feet hit asphalt. The world outside felt foreign—too open, too alive. Neon lights glimmered faintly in the distance, blurred by mist. I was free, but nowhere felt safe.A sound split the silence behind me—a low, mechanical hum. My pulse spiked. Drones. Human ones this time. Their red eyes swept across the wreckage like predators searching for a scent. I dove into a culvert, pressing myself into the mud as the searchlights passed inches from my face. The air trembled with their
The light in the cell shifted as the door beyond the glass hissed open. Kael stepped through the mist like a shadow given flesh. He looked exactly as I remembered—tall, composed, the same eyes that once held the pack together—but colder now. Everything human in him had been burned away and reforged into control.My palms pressed against the glass. It thrummed faintly, like it recognized my power and dared me to try. The air itself hummed with energy, symbols pulsing along the edges of the walls. Whatever this prison was, it wasn’t human-made alone. The sigils etched in the glass shimmered with ancient magic.Kael smiled when he saw me. Not kindly. Like a scientist might smile at the creature that finally behaved. 'Alive,' he said. 'Good.'I wanted to speak, to demand answers, but my throat was dry. The last thing I remembered was the blast, the sky turning white, Auren’s voice fading in the chaos. Now there was only silence and this cage. 'You’re supposed to be dead,' I whispered.Kae







