Chapter Seventeen - The Flock and the Flame

The Crows’ POV

The moon hung high in the sky, pale and cold, but no stars dared to burn tonight. Out past the edge of the academy wards, where the trees knotted so tightly that the mist never cleared and the air tasted of iron and old magic, three shadows gathered in a circle of stone. Their laughter had long since died. Now, only power spoke.

Gloria knelt first, laying a talon-shaped blade across her knees. Its hilt was carved from bone that pulsed faintly in the darkness, like a heartbeat echoing through the ground. The air grew colder around her, coiling like serpents, and her lips moved without sound. The frost crawling along her skin wasn’t entirely natural; it was the blade calling to her, the spirits whispering their obedience.

Patricia stood at her right, holding a mirror shard in one hand and a pinch of crimson ash in the other. She tilted her head as though listening to a frequency no one else could perceive. Her chant was low, melodic, almost casual, but the words carried weight that twisted the air:

“Mirror to blood, bone to flame…

Let the hidden path reclaim.

We speak not of name, nor face—

But will, unbroken, bound to fate.”

She let the ash fall. It hissed and writhed like a living thing, burning on the stone, curling up into the mist above their heads. Shadows stretched unnaturally, crawling along the ground, reaching for something they couldn’t name.

Then Elara stepped into the center. Her black robes were stitched with forbidden runes, glittering faintly with their own cold hunger. No smile touched her lips. Hunger alone flickered in her eyes.

She raised her arms, and her voice cut through the silence like glass:

“Korrvak nesh taloum… grahnak velmuirch. Os’hallonn. Drevuuk.”

The air answered her. The shadows of the forest shivered. Spirits and echoes, long bound to nothing and everything, moved in perfect synchronicity, weaving between the trees, the stones, and the mist. The circle shimmered violet. The earth beneath their feet cracked, small fractures spreading like veins. From deep behind the veil of the spirit world, a scream echoed—not loud, but old and hungry, brushing against the edges of the mortal realm.

A fourth presence stirred in the smoke. Only a whisper of it, a ripple of pressure across the skin. One of them, only they could feel it. One name etched into the bones of the ritual: Vaulisk.

Gloria didn’t flinch as the cold deepened to frost. She lowered her head and whispered, voice barely audible over the hiss of shadow:

“It waits in flame. In the hollow of her blood. She just doesn’t know it yet.”

Patricia’s eyes fluttered shut. Her voice sounded distant, glassy, as if carried from another time or place:

“This… isn’t shadow or spirit. It’s something deeper. Hungrier. It doesn’t bend to magic. It bends magic to it.”

Elara’s response was clipped, sharp. “She won’t stand against it when the time comes.”

Gloria looked up through the curling mist, and her words were almost absentminded, but each one was precise, heavy with inevitability:

“It dreams through her. Moves behind her shadow. And when the veil shatters… it will step through her.”

Silence fell like a stone dropped into black water. The wind recoiled. Even the mist seemed to pause, holding its breath.

Minutes passed, stretching into eternity. Each of them could feel the presence of the fourth entity threading itself closer to Sierra’s life, curling around her shadow, whispering through the air she breathed. It was patient. Cold. Ancient. And the girls had only just begun to test its tether.

Later, they returned toward the dorms. Robes traded for uniforms, magic hidden beneath glamours, the familiar façade of students slipping back into place. But the night air hummed with the memory of what had just been done.

Patricia’s whisper cut through the quiet, low and skeptical. “Why now?”

Elara’s voice was colder, sharper, but with a feral undercurrent. “Because it’s working. Malick’s distracted. Sierra’s cracking. You felt it in class. The pull—the way her shadows stir when she thinks no one’s watching.”

“She’ll summon soon,” Gloria murmured. “Something old. Something loud.”

Elara’s lips curved into a thin, feral smile. “Good. Let it come. The louder she screams, the more the veil tears.”

Patricia shivered slightly, though her face betrayed nothing. “And Malick?”

Elara’s gaze flickered, almost tender, almost calculating. “If he gets caught in the fallout… oh well.”

The three of them leaned closer together as they stepped into the darkened forest, moving in silence except for the soft brushing of their shoes against the undergrowth. Their shadows stretched and twisted unnaturally, hints of magic and malice spilling from the tips of their fingers. Every step marked territory claimed, every movement a promise of the chaos to come.

Gloria’s voice was soft, almost to herself, but it carried. “It will be beautiful, when it comes. And terrifying. She’s going to awaken it, and she won’t know what’s hers to command—and what commands her.”

Elara’s smile widened. Predatory. Patient. Immortal in ambition. “Let her break. Let her scream. Let the magic tear everything open. Then… we will see what she truly is.”

Patricia’s lips pressed into a thin line. “And Malick? She—he—”

“Focus,” Elara said, voice soft as a knife. “The boy is irrelevant. The veil will claim her first. The rest… can wait.”

And none of them looked back as the forest swallowed their footprints whole. Shadows folded over themselves, mist closed behind them, and the night returned to its calm, masking the tremor of magic that had just been unleashed.

Only Vaulisk waited, patient, hungering, and aware of the girl who would soon awaken what it had lain dormant to feed.