MasukThe Capital Palace was, like, holding it self together by pure will.In the first few hours after the earthquake the city went quiet in this agonizing way, almost too quiet. In the Royal Study, Dante and I stood over the map tableDante’s massive black bone-armor was all scarred and chipped from that clash with the Emperor, his golden eyes stuck on the tiny wooden blocks, each one meaning the Iron Fleet.There were three hundred of them."We pulled the remaining Black Summit guards to the upper cliffs," Liam said, his voice hollow, like it had been wrung out dry. "We’ve got twenty heavy Moon-steel ballistas mounted along the ridge. But Luna… we have maybe two thousand able-bodied fighters left. If the Emperor lands a full-scale infantry push, under the cover of that artillery, they’ll overrun the cliffs in minutes."I stared at the map. Twelve hours wasn’t anywhere near enough to breed an army. It also wasn’t enough time to craft a weapon, not even a decent one."We hold the line," Da
The air between them literally sparked, the golden fire of Dante’s Alpha aura violently clashing against the suffocating, pulsing red blood-magic of the Emperor.Valerius didn’t draw a sword, not even once. He didn’t need one, at all.The Emperor lifted his massive obsidian-plated hand. A thick , whip like tendril of dark red energy shot out, fast as a bullet. Dante moved, dodged, and the tendril sliced through the space where his head had been a heartbeat ago, carving a deep, smoking trench into the cliffside behind us.Dante didn’t hang around for a second strike.He exploded forward, a blur of black bone-armor, and golden fire.He closed the distance in some fraction of a second and drove his fist straight into Valerius’s chest. The sound was ugly , like a bomb going off. A shockwave of displaced air rolled across the beach, and the last bits of debris got knocked into the surf.Valerius slid backward a few inches in the sand, but he didn’t collapse.Those ancient glowing red runes
The sky didn't just fall; it shattered.The sheer concussive force of the Iron Fleet's broadside bombardment turned the Western Harbor into an apocalyptic nightmare.Massive, two-ton iron cannonballs slammed into the beach, throwing geysers of wet sand, saltwater, and fire hundreds of feet into the air.The first blast… the shockwave caught me mid-breath, i got yanked clean off my feet and thrown hard, backwards. I hit the ground and the air just ran out of me. My shoulder, bleeding, it felt like it was on fire, that cut from Lyra’s bone-blade burning like hot coals, except it was worse. It was screaming at me, no, it was screaming at my whole body."Luna! Get up!" Liam’s voice cut through the explosions, kind of, not really. Like it barely got through the roar.Then strong hands grabbed me by the back of my tactical vest, hauling me upright. Alpha Silas. His face was smeared with soot and sand, like he’d crawled out of a furnace."The truce is broken, we have to reach the Capital wal
The sun dipped below the jagged horizon, bleeding a deep, bruised purple across the Western Ocean. The time for parley was over. The time for the Blood Rite had begun.I stood alone in the center of the wet, hard-packed sand of the harbor. Behind me, Liam, Silas, and a line of Black Summit guards watched with bated breath, forced to stay behind the designated boundary markers.Out on the dark water, a single black longboat separated from the massive Imperial flagship. It cut through the surf, grinding onto the beach.I gripped the hilt of my Moon-steel sword, bracing myself for another towering, seven-foot behemoth like General Kael.But the Lycan who stepped out of the boat wasn't a hulking brute.She was female, incredibly lean, and moved with a terrifying, liquid grace. Her bone-armor wasn't formed into thick, defensive plates; it protruded from her forearms, shins, and spine in sleek, razor-sharp blades. She looked aerodynamic, built purely for speed and lethal precision."I am Ly
The silence was infinitely worse than the cannons.With three hundred iron dreadnoughts anchored just off the coast, the Capital braced, hard, for a world-ending barrage of artillery. The Black Summit guards manned the coastal ballistas, their hands slick with sweat. In the medical wing i gripped the windowsill so tightly my knuckles ached, real painful. But the cannons didn’t fire. Not even once. The massive, city-sized flagship floating in the center of the armada just… sat there, its dark iron hull rising and falling with the ocean swells, like it was breathing. “Why arent they firing?” Liam asked, stepping up beside me, his crossbow lowered but his whole body still locked up tight. “They have us completely outgunned. They could level the cliffs in ten minutes.” “Look,” i said, and pointed toward the water. Lowering from the side of the colossal flagship was a single black-wood longboat. It hit the water with a heavy splash. Six massive Lycan warriors manned the oars, rowing i
The medical wing of the Capital Palace smelled heavily of antiseptic and burnt flesh.Dante was spread out on the reinforced steel cot, his huge battered frame just… not moving at all.Dr. Evans, and a crew of six medics, had been on him for three solid hours, slow and careful, cutting away those ruined, blackened plates of his bone-armor and laying thick soothing salves over the awful burns that covered his skin.“His healing factor is working, Luna, but it’s erratic,” Dr. Evans said quietly, moving away from the bed to talk with me. He looked cooked out, like seriously tired, wiping sweat off his brow with the back of his hand. “A wolf should heal from burns like this in a day. But the magic from the Primordial Font… it’s wrestling his normal biology. His body is caught in the middle, halfway between that fresh modern wolf body and the old ancient Lycan form. And the bone-armor… it’s not sliding back.”I glanced over at Dante. Even knocked out, his brow stayed crumpled, his jaw clen
The silence in the hallway was broken by the sound of pure slaughter.I rested against the wall while I held my bleeding shoulder. Every breath I took brought the silver and Wolfsbane dust which still burned in my lungs. Vanessa lay unconscious at my feet, a thin trail of blood trickling from where
The command center was plunged into absolute darkness.My breathing created the only sound in the room for five seconds until the backup generators started with a loud clunk. Flashing red emergency lights emitted dim light that created a bloody glow throughout the room.The giant wall screens were
The tablet screen was still glitching from Dante’s crushing grip when the first siren screamed.The castle experienced a powerful bone-shaking sound which transmitted through its entire structure. The war room activated red emergency lights which generated bright shadows that extended across the ma
Two weeks later, the girl in the mirror was almost unrecognizable.The hollow cheeks were filling out, giving my face a softness I hadn't seen since I was a child. The dark circles under my eyes had vanished, replaced by a healthy, porcelain glow. But the biggest change was the eyes themselves. The







