INICIAR SESIÓNThe thunder of approaching paws swelled, a rolling wave of sound that vibrated through the floor of the cavern. It was not the chaotic roar of battle, but the disciplined, earth-shaking cadence of a procession. A march of survivors.Lyra moved first, her instincts sharp despite her injuries. “Marcus, the prisoners. Secure them out of sight in the side passage. They are not part of this narrative.” Her tone brooked no argument. This moment was for history, not for Vorian’s pathetic epilogue.Marcus and the other warriors swiftly hustled Vorian and his broken men into a narrow fissure in the cavern wall, a natural cell now serving as their temporary cage. Vorian offered no resistance, his spirit crushed by the ghosts of the ossuary. He was already a footnote.I remained on my knees, cradling Kaelen’s unconscious, ice-cold form against me. I couldn’t move him. He was a threadbare anchor, and I was the only thing keeping him from drifting back into the dark. The bond, once a hollow void,
The journey back to the obsidian mountain was a silent, grim procession. We were a caravan of the wounded and the weary. Lyra, her arm in a makeshift sling, walked with a stoic limp. Lillian, freed from Morvana’s shadow but hollowed by the ordeal, leaned on me, her steps slow and unsure. Marcus led, his own injuries pushed aside by sheer will, a handful of the most loyal pack warriors forming a protective perimeter. Vorian and his men, disarmed and broken in spirit, were dragged along as prisoners, a living testament to a failed ambition.No one spoke. The only sound was the crunch of frost underfoot and the distant, dying echoes of the battle we’d left behind. The Thorn Alliance had prevailed, but at a steep cost. The air, once thick with the wrongness of Morvana’s hunger, now held the cleaner, sadder scent of blood and smoke.And inside me, the pulse.It was my compass, my lifeline, a faint but steady rhythm in the cavern of my soul where the roaring storm of Kaelen used to live. Ea
The pulse in the bond was a fragile, distant star in the vast emptiness inside me, but it was life. It was Kaelen, clinging to existence after channeling a cataclysm. That fragile light was the only warmth in the sudden, chilling reality of our victory.We had slain a god, only to find a vulture circling.Vorian’s voice, echoing down the ossuary passage, was a serpent’s hiss of pure opportunism. The sounds of his approach weren’t the chaotic noise of battle; they were the disciplined, grim sounds of a clean-up crew—boots on stone, the clink of weapons, low, confident commands. He’d waited. He’d let us exhaust ourselves against Morvana, and now he was coming to pick the bones.Lyra stumbled to her feet, leaning heavily on a femur thicker than her arm. Her face was ashen, one arm hung limp, but her silver eyes blazed. “The Defiler,” she spat. “He smells carrion.”Lillian stirred, moaning softly. I crawled to her, my limbs feeling like lead weights, my body a hollowed-out gourd. The Aeth
Power. Not the cold, silver threads of my Weaver heritage, now severed and silent. Not the warm, borrowed strength of Kaelen’s Alpha might. This was something else. Something foundational. The Aether was the raw stuff of creation, the magma beneath the crust of reality. It did not flow into me; it unmade me and remade me in its passage.It was agony and ecstasy woven into a single, shattering chord. My bones became crystal, singing with pressure. My blood turned to liquid starlight, burning through my veins. Visions, not my own, exploded behind my eyes—the birth of mountains, the death of suns, the silent dance of ley lines across a sleeping planet. I saw the first Weaver, not as a tyrant, but as a steward, gently coaxing order from this chaos. I saw Morvana’s betrayal, her greedy grasp twisting the gentle art into a cruel science.And I saw Kaelen.He was a silhouette of pure, defiant will at the heart of the storm, the rune he’d carved into his prison glowing like a beacon. He wasn’
The voice from the darkness was a hook in my soul, reeling us forward into the chill. We stepped through the false wall, our single flashlight beam cutting a pathetic swath through the profound black. It fell upon bones. Not neatly stacked, but piled, heaped, a jumbled sea of femurs, skulls, and rib cages that filled a cavernous space from the slimy floor to the shadowed vault of the ceiling decades above. The Ossuary. The collective remains of centuries of Blackwood pack, their final energy a silent, heavy blanket that smothered the air and muted the magic in my blood to a faint, dying whisper.Vorian’s trap was perfectly sprung. We were in a cage of his design.“The dead make such excellent company,” Morvana’s voice echoed, directionless, seeming to come from everywhere and nowhere. “So quiet. So… settled. Unlike the living. Always squirming.”Lillian flinched beside me, her hand tightening on the cloth-wrapped bowl. The tether, that psychic fishhook, gave a sickening tug. She gaspe
The voice from the darkness was a hook in my soul, reeling us forward into the chill. We stepped through the false wall, our single flashlight beam cutting a pathetic swath through the profound black. It fell upon bones. Not neatly stacked, but piled, heaped, a jumbled sea of femurs, skulls, and rib cages that filled a cavernous space from the slimy floor to the shadowed vault of the ceiling decades above. The Ossuary. The collective remains of centuries of Blackwood pack, their final energy a silent, heavy blanket that smothered the air and muted the magic in my blood to a faint, dying whisper.Vorian’s trap was perfectly sprung. We were in a cage of his design.“The dead make such excellent company,” Morvana’s voice echoed, directionless, seeming to come from everywhere and nowhere. “So quiet. So… settled. Unlike the living. Always squirming.”Lillian flinched beside me, her hand tightening on the cloth-wrapped bowl. The tether, that psychic fishhook, gave a sickening tug. She gaspe







