The forest felt different.Selene moved through it not as a hunted creature, but as something reborn quiet, resolute, crackling with energy just under her skin. The moonlight filtering through the trees cast her in silver and shadow, and every step seemed to pulse in rhythm with the earth. She wasn’t the same girl who had fled Caden’s betrayal, or the woman who had screamed through a spirit wolf’s binding. She was more. And that terrified her.Rowan walked beside her, his usually confident gait weighted with unease. He hadn’t spoken since they left the clearing. Selene could feel his thoughts press against her mental barriers, polite but persistent, like rain tapping at a window. He wanted to talk. She wasn’t sure she was ready.Agnes, trailing behind them, said nothing either. The silence was heavy, wrapped around them like fog.Finally, Rowan broke it. “You haven’t asked where we’re going.”“I figured you’d tell me when it mattered,” she replied, voice low.“It matters now.”Selene
The climb took all night.Selene walked in silence, her only companions the wind, the cold breath of stars, and the dagger Rowan had given her. The Summit of Mirrors rose above the cloudline like the broken crown of an ancient god—jagged stone and glittering frost catching starlight in fractured reflections.They said that those who reached the peak could see all their lives at once: who they were, who they could have been, and who they were becoming.And now, it would show Selene the cost of becoming more.Her breath came in quiet bursts. She did not feel pain. She did not feel exhaustion. Her body had long since shifted into something that could endure what her soul was still unsure of.When she reached the top, the silence was absolute.The sky had turned black above her. Not with night—but with eclipse. The full moon now hidden, casting no light, only pressure. The world below forgotten. The stars above sharpened like blades.She stepped into the circle of mirrors.Each one rose l
They found him waiting at the edge of the world.Where the mountains folded into the sky and stars clung to the earth like dew, the child stood with the Book Without a Name tucked under one arm, his bare feet resting on a slab of ancient stone inscribed with no language known to wolves.Selene stepped forward, Rowan at her side.“You brought me here for a reason,” she said. “So speak it.”The child smiled gently. “You remembered yourself. I wasn’t sure you would.”“You gave me a choice,” Selene replied. “That means you wanted me to find my way back.”“Not wanted,” he said. “Needed.”Vera narrowed her eyes. “Enough riddles. Who are you?”Agnes approached, slowly. Her face had gone pale.“I think I know,” she said. “But I hope I’m wrong.”The child met her gaze.“You’re not.”He turned to Selene.“You’ve been told many stories about the Moon Goddess. That she gave you power. That she faded away, leaving behind fragments of herself. That you are one of those fragments.”Selene nodded, ca
The wind shifted the moment they crossed the ridge into the hollow where the last Silver Moon stronghold had once stood.Selene reined in her horse.Beneath her, the ground was silent. But it wasn’t still. There was a hum—low and deep—like the vibration of a drum buried beneath the earth. It echoed in her bones.Rowan noticed it too. “You feel that?”Selene nodded. “It's a memory. Waking up.”They dismounted together and walked into the ruin on foot. Vines had grown through the stone. Trees had begun reclaiming the land. The bones of what had once been their sanctuary were being devoured by time. 
“The girl who became a god will soon forget she was ever a girl at all.”Selene stared into the fire, those words echoing like a curse inside her chest. No one else heard them the way she did—not as prophecy, but as warning.Rowan’s voice broke the silence. “What does that mean?”She didn’t look at him. “It means every time I use what’s inside me—every time I reach deeper into what the Moon left behind—I lose something. A memory. A reflex. A name I used to answer to.”Rowan moved closer. “Then stop using it.”Selene turned slowly, and her voice was barely a whi
The stars did not fall.They rearranged.Night after night, wolves across every region looked up and swore the constellations had changed. The familiar shapes—the hunter, the twin flames, the eternal wolf—were fractured. New patterns burned into the sky, ones no elder could explain.And in a chamber carved from bone and shadow, a child studied them all.He flipped through the book with blank pages. Words inked themselves as he watched. Not in a language spoken aloud, but in memories. In truths too heavy to carry.One sentence emerged in glowing gold:“Even a god who