Chapter Thirty Five - Ashes Don't Stay Buried ( Aria's POV )

The world didn’t breathe when the Circle went dark.

For a heartbeat, maybe longer, everything was still. The last flickers of power sank into the stones, like fire retreating beneath cold ash. Only the echo of my scream remained, carved into the night air.

Kael didn’t let go. His grip on me was steady, rough in a way that made it real. The ground was cold against my knees, the scent of burnt magic thick enough to choke.

Lyra crouched near the edge of the Circle, her palms pressed flat to the earth. Her runes had dimmed, but her eyes hadn’t. They were sharp, cutting through the dark.

“It’s over,” she said.

But her voice didn’t sound like victory.

Kael’s hand slid to the back of my neck, warm and grounding. “Can you stand?”

I nodded, though it wasn’t entirely true. My body felt like glass held together by a whisper. When I tried to rise, the world tilted. Kael caught me easily, his arm a wall around my waist.

“Easy,” he muttered. “You’re safe.”

The words should have felt like relief.

They didn’t.

The air beyond the Ridge was too quiet. No wind. No night creatures. Just a silence that pressed down on the skin, heavy and expectant.

The wolves broke the stillness first.

“Alpha,” Jarek called from the perimeter. His voice was low, wary. “Something’s moving.”

Kael’s head snapped toward the tree line.

The Circle might have burned Ronan’s rot out of me, but the forest hadn’t forgotten what it had felt. Magic like that left fingerprints.

Shadows gathered between the trees, not thick enough to form a shape but too deliberate to be wind.

Lyra’s face drained of what little color it had left. “We need to leave. Now.”

Kael shifted me against his chest and rose in one smooth motion. His pulse thundered where my cheek rested against him, steady as a war drum.

“Jarek,” he barked. “Form the line. We’re moving out in two.”

The wolves obeyed without question.

Lyra lingered, her eyes fixed on the stones. “Kael,” she said quietly, “this shouldn’t be happening. The Circle doesn’t just…wake up.”

He didn’t answer. He didn’t have to.

Because he’d seen it too, those faint flickers between the shadows. Something had watched the ritual. Something old enough to be patient.

Kael carried me from the clearing, his jaw tight, every muscle in his body drawn like a blade.

And behind us… the stones began to hum again.

The Ashlands stretched before us like a scar. The burnt earth cracked beneath the wolves’ boots, every step echoing too loud in the hollow night. The moon hung low and red, bleeding into the horizon.

Kael didn’t slow. His stride was ruthless, forcing the pack to match him. I could feel his heartbeat against my back where he still held me, too rigid to be calm.

“Put me down,” I whispered.

He didn’t look at me. “No.”

“Kael.”

His jaw flexed. “You can barely stand. I’m not risking you.”

It wasn’t the weight that bothered him. It was the silence. The shadows. The thing that waited just out of sight.

Lyra fell into step beside us, sweat drying on her temples, her cloak smeared with ash. “Whatever we woke,” she said under her breath, “it’s following.”

I didn’t ask how she knew. I could feel it too. That slow, creeping pull behind us.

Not Ronan.

Worse.

Kael shifted his grip, his hand sliding down to brush my stomach, a silent question.

I answered with the faintest nod. The bond with the child was still there, fragile but steady. The rot was gone. But something else had taken notice.

Something that wanted what Ronan had lost.

We reached the tree line just before dawn.

Mist clung to the forest floor like it didn’t want to let us leave. The moment we crossed into living woods again, the wolves relaxed, slightly. Their ears twitched. Their steps softened. But the tension didn’t fade.

Kael finally set me down against the trunk of an old birch. His hands hovered longer than they should have, as if letting go would break something fragile.

I leaned against the bark, trying to steady my breathing. “You’re staring,” I said.

He didn’t deny it. “You scared the hell out of me.”

“Wouldn’t be the first time,” I tried to joke. It came out as a rasp.

His hand brushed a strand of hair from my face, slow, reverent. “Next time you rip a piece of ancient magic out of your soul, maybe warn me first.”

“Next time,” I whispered, “maybe there won’t be one.”

The corner of his mouth twitched, but it didn’t reach his eyes.

Lyra approached then, her boots crunching softly over the leaves. “We need to keep moving,” she said. “Whatever’s behind us didn’t vanish when the sun came up.”

Kael looked over his shoulder. The mist hadn’t thinned. It was thickening again, rolling forward like a tide.

“What is it?” I asked.

Lyra hesitated. And that was answer enough.

“Old magic doesn’t just die,” she said finally. “It changes shape. The Circle burned the rot, but power like Ronan’s leaves echoes. Shadows. They feed on bloodlines, and you…” Her eyes dropped to my stomach. “…are a beacon.”

Kael straightened, Alpha again. “Then we keep them from getting close.”

“Do you even hear yourself?” Lyra snapped. “You can’t fight shadows with steel.”

His gaze was hard as iron. “Then I’ll learn how to make the shadows bleed.”

The pack moved again.

We abandoned the road for the river path, hoping the water would mask our scent. Kael walked close, his hand occasionally brushing mine, not accidental. Every contact was deliberate, a promise he didn’t say out loud.

By midday, exhaustion set in. My legs trembled, my breath hitched in shallow bursts. Lyra noticed before Kael could bark at me to rest. She grabbed his arm. “She needs a break.”

Kael hesitated, but when he looked at me, whatever fight he had vanished.

The wolves set up a quick perimeter near the river’s bend. The sun sat high but gave no warmth. The forest smelled clean, but the air still carried something wrong.

Kael knelt beside me, pouring water into my hands. “Drink.”

I did. The cold hit the back of my throat like ice.

“I’m fine,” I said.

“You’re not,” he countered. “You’ve lost too much.”

“Then stop looking at me like I’ll shatter.”

His eyes met mine then, storm-dark and unyielding. “You already did once. I’m not letting it happen again.”

Something in my chest cracked, not from fear. From the way he said it. Quiet. Fierce. Like a vow.

I looked away first. “You can’t protect me from everything, Kael.”

“No,” he said simply. “But I’ll die trying.”

The pack’s low warning growls snapped us out of it.

Jarek appeared from the treeline, his eyes gold-bright. “Alpha,” he said, “they’re here.”

Mist bled through the forest again. Faster this time.

The shadows didn’t creep, they surged.

Shapes emerged from the fog, formless and shifting, but their hunger was tangible. It pressed against the edges of my mind like icy fingers, searching for a way in.

The child stirred weakly inside me.

Kael rose in a single fluid motion, blade drawn. “Form the line!”

The wolves moved as one, falling into a semicircle around us. Lyra took her place at my side, runes flaring bright.

“They’re not flesh,” she hissed. “Steel won’t hold them.”

“Then hold them another way.” Kael’s voice cut through the air like a blade.

Lyra began chanting in the old tongue, runes crawling across her skin like fire. The mist recoiled, but didn’t retreat.

A shadow lunged.

Kael met it head-on, his blade slicing through black smoke. It screamed, soundless and sharp, before reforming.

“Kael!” I shouted.

He spun, striking again, a warrior built for war, not magic. And still, he stood between me and the dark like a wall.

Lyra threw her hands out, slamming a rune into the earth. Light erupted around us, a barrier of silver fire. The shadows slammed against it, clawing, screaming.

“They want the bloodline,” Lyra gasped.

Me.

The child.

Ronan’s legacy was gone, but the darkness he’d drawn from wasn’t. And now it wanted to claim the next vessel.

My hands pressed against my stomach. Not this time.

I stepped forward, just inside the barrier.

Kael whipped toward me. “Aria...”

“I’m not hiding.”

Something stirred inside me, not Ronan, not rot, but something older. Something that had been waiting beneath the fear. The Circle hadn’t just burned away his bond. It had left a spark.

I grabbed Lyra’s hand, shoving it against mine. “Feed it to me.”

Her eyes widened. “You don’t know what you’re asking..”

“Do it!”

She hesitated a fraction too long. Then the runes burned brighter.

Power flooded through me, hot and electric, crawling into every vein. The shadows shrieked, drawn to me like moths to flame.

And I let them.

For the first time, I didn’t flinch. I pulled them in. Let the hunger meet something fiercer.

The light erupted outward, white-gold, searing through the mist. The shadows split apart, their screams swallowed by the dawn.

When it was done, the forest was silent.

This time… a real silence.

Kael caught me as I collapsed. My head pressed against his chest, his heart pounding like a drum. His voice was rough against my hair. “Never do that again.”

I laughed weakly. “You know I will.”

He didn’t argue. His arms only tightened.

Lyra knelt beside us, pale and shaking. “That spark… it wasn’t Ronan’s. It’s yours now. Whatever legacy he left, it’s changing.”

I stared at the rising sun bleeding through the trees.

Ronan was gone. But the war wasn’t.

It had just become mine.