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The moon was not just rising... it was ripening. Swollen. Veined with scarlet. The night air pulsed with it.A low hum started in the earth and didn’t stop.The trees around the Hollowborn fields bent like they were listening.Emilia stood in the center of the clearing barefoot, her palms bloody, sweat beading along her spine. The night clung to her like a second skin... every rustle of leaves, every shifting wolf in the distance amplified, as if the moon were inside her skull, beating like a second heart.The sky above cracked with red clouds that shouldn’t have been there. No storm. No thunder. Just... pressure. A rising tension. The prelude to something old and holy and catastrophic.The Blood Phase had begun.And with it came the waking dreams.It started with a flicker. A twitch behind her eyes. Then the world broke.She saw Asher.His throat torn open, blood bubbling between his teeth. Reaching for her.Then Victor.On his knees, screaming in a language older than English. Fire
The storm didn’t announce itself with thunder, but with stillness. A silence so sharp Emilia thought her own breath might shatter it. The trees outside the farmhouse bowed as if bearing witness, wind barely stirring their limbs.She opened the door to her room and froze.There it was. Laid neatly on her bed, atop the worn quilt her grandmother had stitched years ago—a dress. White. Laced. Full-skirted. The fabric shimmered in the low light like bone under moonlight.But the bottom hem...Stained. Soaked in red.Dark and wet and unmistakable.Blood.And worse still—the smell.Wolfsbane. Sweet at first. Sickly. Then cloying. Like poison disguised as perfume. Layered beneath it... roses. Not wild. Not fresh. Not real.Dead roses. Wilted petals, dried and crushed into the lining like funeral confetti.Emilia didn’t move. Didn’t breathe.Her hands twitched at her sides, nails nearly piercing her palms.It wasn’t just a dress.It was a message.A ritual.A vow.“I’m coming,” it whispere
The blood didn’t just pool... it soaked. Into the grain of the church pew. Into the roots that curled beneath the town’s cobbled edge. Into Nolan’s boots.Three bodies.Three townsfolk.Torn in ways no human ever should be. Ribs split outward like petals. Skin sheared in ritualistic spirals. Blood spattered across the altar like a perverse communion. The massacre had no mercy, no logic. Just message.Detective Nolan stood over the scene, jaw tight, hands still trembling despite the weight of his flashlight and his years on the job. He’d seen maulings before. Animal attacks. Even the aftermath of werewolf encounters, though he never admitted those aloud.But this... this was deliberate.“There’s something in the pattern,” he muttered, crouching by the nearest body.Martha stood in the doorway, arms crossed, face pale. She didn’t step inside. She couldn’t. Not again.“Don’t touch it,” she warned. “They’re not done bleeding.”Nolan looked at her sharply. “What do you mean?”“They were ar
The chapel was no longer a place of worship. It reeked of scorched blood, half-shifted fur, and the madness of a man no longer bound by reason. Only the stained-glass moon above remained untouched—its red eye gazing down like a voyeur, watching the descent with fascination instead of horror.Victor stood bare-chested in the center of the stone floor. Blood already slicked his hands. His breath came in short, fevered bursts, each one dragged up from the deepest pit of him like he had to tear it loose.The knife was obsidian. The edge not forged, but broken. Sharp in the way curses are—shaped by hatred and handed down.He didn’t flinch as he carved the sigil into his chest.A spiral of fang and claw. The Hollowborn mark, mutated with his own—lines interwoven, twisted like mating snakes. A mating brand.His fingers trembled at the final curve, but not from fear. It was joy.When he was done, he dropped the blade. It clattered against the stone, echoing too loud in the chapel's silence.
The night was too quiet.No wind. No breath in the trees. No crickets, no owl. Just the sharp, too-clean silence that came before something ancient woke. Emilia stood in the center of the Hollowborn clearing, barefoot, her skin dusted with ash. The moon hung low and swollen, red veining its edges like blood surfacing beneath frost.The Binding Moon.They whispered about it in the dreams she never spoke aloud. The night when the wolf within would offer her not just a crown—but a choice.And choices… always came with consequences.Her body still ached from the tribunal, from the eyes that watched her as judge and heir. But it was her soul that hurt more—a tug of something deeper now, older than pack, older than love.She had dreamed of Asher’s voice, once steady and grounding, now cracking with doubt. She had dreamed of Victor’s mouth at her throat, but it wasn’t lust that drove him—it was hunger. And then she had dreamed of herself… a version of her she didn’t recognize.Silver-eyed. B
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