The clearing was older than memory.Stone slabs half-swallowed by roots formed a jagged circle, not perfect, not holy—something rougher, more primal. Smoke clung to the air, thick and gray, curling like spirits without tongues. The scent of blood soaked the wind, but it was memory-blood, not fresh… not yet.The Hollowborn had returned to their roots.And tonight, justice would crawl out of the dirt.Emilia stood at the center of the circle, bare feet pressed to moss and ash. She wore no cloak. No blade. Her hair hung loose, tangled with bits of bark. Her eyes glowed not with rage—but with something quieter. Older. A fury sharpened to purpose.This wasn’t about vengeance.This was judgment.Before her, the gathered wolves ringed the stone—a gallery of the broken, the bitten, the betrayed. The Packless. The Half-shifted. Elders with eyes like wet coal. Young ones with hands trembling, not from fear, but bloodlust. The Hollowborn’s ghosts whispered just beyond the trees, invisible but ne
The first thing to go was his skin.It sloughed in patches... paper-thin, curling at the edges like burnt leaves. Beneath, raw muscle pulsed, veins thrumming silver-black like they didn’t belong to a man or a beast. Just something... becoming.Victor Marshall sat alone in the hollowed ruins of the chapel, the same one where he'd once shown Emilia what he could be: power cloaked in gentleness, hunger disguised as prophecy.Now, the hunger made no pretense.Now, it devoured.He dragged a hand down his face, nails elongated and thick with blackened keratin. The skin came with it—strings of it caught between his claws, stretched, snapped. His teeth chattered from the cold inside him, not the air. There was no air in here anymore. Only the heat of rot, thick and damp and sacred.Moonlight spilled through the broken rafters in pale blades. It painted the altar. The same altar he’d knelt at a thousand times, where blood offerings had been poured, where promises had been made... and broken.H
The wind had no right to be that quiet.Not in this clearing. Not tonight.Martha stepped from her car like she was crossing into a church she wasn’t sure she believed in. Her boots crunched against leaves that felt dry as bone, and the duffel bag—packed with something far older than she was ready for—pressed against her spine with every step.Emilia was waiting.Barefoot. Pale. Still.The forest seemed to bend away from her, like the trees themselves remembered her father… or were already learning to fear her.“You brought them,” Emilia said, her voice hollow, like a bell rung in a crypt.Martha nodded, unslinging the duffel and setting it at the girl’s feet. “These were buried beneath a government warehouse. Tagged, boxed, forgotten. But they weren’t done.”Emilia crouched slowly, her hair falling like ink down her shoulders, and unzipped the duffel. The scent that rushed out was iron and ash, dust soaked in memory. She reached in and touched one of the bones.The air shifted.The m
Martha hadn’t been sleeping.For nights, she stared at corkboards pinned with case files, crime scene photos, blurry CCTV screenshots of shapes that didn’t walk like men. The Hollowborn theories had started as a whisper. Then a pattern. Then a voice in her skull that never shut up.Now it was a scream.She sat hunched in Nolan’s office, the blinds drawn, the scent of burnt coffee curling through the stale air. A manila folder trembled in her hands, still damp from the rain outside. She’d gone out alone. She hadn’t told Nolan.He walked in behind her, trench coat soaked, his expression pinched."You went to the Ridge facility without authorization," he said, no greeting. No pretense.Martha didn’t flinch. "I got the bones. The ones they tagged from the Cold Case Vault as 'unidentifiable hybrid remains.' They're Hollowborn. And you know it."Nolan dropped his keys on the desk with a dull clatter. His shoulders rolled with the tension of a man standing on a wire."You think breaking prot
The farmhouse had never felt smaller.Not when Victor’s shadow hung over it.Not when wolves stalked the tree line.Not when blood had once soaked the porch steps and washed into the soil.But now, with just the two of them standing in the kitchen, Emilia thought the walls might snap from the pressure.Asher leaned against the counter, arms crossed, a muscle twitching in his jaw. His shirt was damp at the collar, boots still muddy from wherever he’d stormed back from. And his eyes—gods, those eyes—looked like they hadn’t slept since he’d left her.She stood opposite him, palms flat on the old wooden table like she needed to ground herself or risk shattering through the floor.Neither spoke first.The silence was venom.Finally, he cracked. “You marked me.”The words were not a question. Not a confession. A wound.She flinched, but held his gaze. “I didn’t mean to.”His laugh was a bitter thing, hollow in his throat. “You never mean to. But somehow, it always happens.”“What’s that sup
It began with a scent.Not the kind carried on the wind like a warning—but something low. Sunk into the soil. Bone-deep. Familiar in a way that scraped at the softest corners of her chest.Emilia had just stepped down from the Hollowborn altar. Her fingers were still stained with heart-blood. Her veins still hummed with the howls of others—wolves who had no packs until now.And yet… the moment she caught it—him—everything inside her stilled.Asher.The forest shifted.The wind slowed, curled inwards like it too held its breath.She didn’t run.Didn’t even move.She waited.Waited until the trees parted with a reluctant groan, and he emerged from between the columns of dark cedar and bone-root.Asher Wembley.Alive.Barefoot. Shirt torn. Mud across his chest like bruises painted in silence. There was no blood, but there was something worse—emptiness.His eyes didn’t gleam like she remembered. They didn’t glow. They were dull. Shadowed.“Asher,” she whispered, a ghost’s name slipping fr