MasukThe world was gone.There was no sound, no sky, no blood nor air — only light, endless and consuming. Serena drifted in it like a leaf in a river, her consciousness breaking apart into sparks. For a moment, she thought she was dead. But death, she realized, shouldn’t feel this loud inside her veins.The light rippled. She fell through it. And then the silence cracked open.A pulse of silver and black spread across the horizon as her body slammed against a surface made of starlight. When she opened her eyes, she was standing in a place beyond anything mortal — a vast expanse of luminous fog and floating shards of memory. Every step she took sent ripples through the ground, and in those ripples she saw flashes of her life: her first howl under the full moon, her laughter beside Elias, her battles with Lucian, her promise to the gods.Her breath trembled. Where am I?“The Ethereal Nexus,” a voice whispered from everywhere and nowhere.Serena turned sharply — and her heart nearly stopped.
The dawn after the war came slow and hollow.Smoke still curled from the scorched ridges where the Onyx Wolf had torn through gods, witches, and fate itself. But the world did not sing in victory—it whispered.Serena stirred. The air felt wrong. Too still.She blinked against the weak sunlight, her breath hitching as she tried to remember where she was. Lucian was beside her, silent, his golden eyes watching as if afraid she might vanish again.Her body trembled when she rose, the ground beneath her humming with leftover energy. When she looked down, faint shadows rippled under her skin like ink trapped beneath glass. And worse—when the wind shifted, she heard it.“Serena...”The voice was soft. Familiar.It came from the breeze itself.Her throat tightened. “Elias?”Lucian froze. “Don’t,” he said quietly. “He’s gone.”But she shook her head. “No. He’s calling me.”The warriors of Silver Ridge and Nightfang gathered in silence behind them. Some still bore bandages; others bore empty e
The night had never been so loud.Not even during the Blood Eclipse.Not even when the Onyx Wolf had first howled and cracked the sky open.Now, everything was unraveling.The battlefield still burned where the shadows had receded, a wasteland of blackened trees and scorched soil stretching for miles. Silver Ridge and Nightfang warriors lay scattered across the plain—some wounded, some dead, all staring at the same gaping tear that had replaced the heart of the forest. It pulsed like a wound in the world itself, a hole of liquid darkness where Serena had vanished.Lucian stood at its edge, chest heaving, eyes wild with the kind of grief that stripped a man down to the bones. His claws were still out, dripping with the blood of the council’s last hound. But his heart… his heart had been ripped from him with Serena’s disappearance.Elias stumbled toward him, half-shifted, his storm-gray fur streaked with ash and blood. “She’s gone…” His voice cracked under the weight of those words. “Lu
The battlefield had never known silence like this.One heartbeat ago, Serena Vale had stood as a goddess among wolves, her wings of shadow and storm stretching wide against the eclipse. Then, in the blink of an eye, the darkness devoured her. The eclipse pulsed blood-red, the world shuddered—and she was gone.Gone.The silence was deafening. Wolves who had been snarling, tearing into shadow-hounds, and bleeding for their packs now stood frozen, staring at the empty space where she had been. Even the beasts conjured by Fenris recoiled, trembling as if the absence of the Onyx wolf was more terrifying than her presence.Lucian Draven staggered forward, his breath ragged. His amber eyes burned, searching, refusing to accept what every instinct screamed. His bond with Serena was a thread, stretched thin, thinner, ready to snap. He clutched his chest, snarling at the invisible wound in his soul.“No,” he growled, the sound scraping agai
The battlefield was no longer earth, no longer sky. It was a rift—a scar where realms collided.The eclipse pulsed overhead, its blood-red light dripping like molten fire across the clearing. The howl Serena had unleashed still echoed, even though her lips had fallen silent. It wasn’t just sound—it was power. It tore through trees, split stones, and shook the wolves to their marrow. Many had collapsed, their bodies pressed flat to the earth as if gravity itself had doubled. Others clutched at their chests, gasping as though invisible claws squeezed their hearts.At the center of it all stood Serena.Or what remained of her.Her aura had split into two streams, jagged and raw, like rivers of fire and storm tearing from a single mountain. One burned crimson-gold, tethered to Lucian. The other blazed silver-blue, tied to Elias. They weren’t flowing outward—they were tearing her apart. Every pulse of light was a scream from her s
The battlefield was silent for a heartbeat after Fenris’s strike. Then the silence shattered.Lucian and Elias crashed to the ground, both writhing under the black fire that ate through their veins like molten poison. Their wolves—storm and flame—flickered weakly around them, struggling to manifest.“NO!” Serena’s scream ripped through the air. Shadows erupted from her in jagged arcs, slamming into the earth hard enough to crack the ground. Every wolf on the field—ally, enemy, shadow-beast—froze in place, caught in the weight of her aura. The eclipse itself dimmed, as if the crimson moon feared her rage.She staggered forward, her body half-human, half-wolf, silver and violet fire cracking across her skin like lightning trapped under glass. The bond threads connecting her to Lucian and Elias flickered violently, one pulse from snapping.Fenris’s laughter rolled like thunder. He stood unscathed in the middle of the carnage, his monstrous form blotting out







