Prologue – Seven Years Ago

The sun was setting behind the rolling cliffs, casting golden rays over the grassy plains like the final bow of a performer who knew how to milk a standing ovation. Serenya leaned back in the grass, arms folded beneath her head, grinning as Riko attempted—and failed miserably—to balance a stick on his nose while running like a drunk colt.

“I’m gunna be the fastest stallion ever born!” he yelled mid-lurch.

“You mean the clumsiest,” Lira teased, tossing a pebble at him.

“More like the first one to sprain his ankle before he even shifts,” added Kaelin, chuckling as he snagged another handful of wild berries from Serenya’s woven pouch.

Serenya rolled her eyes. “Y’all are just jealous. He’s obviously in training for the Grand Gallop of Idiots.”

They erupted into laughter, the kind that tightened your ribs and warmed your cheeks, the kind that made you forget about the quiet pressure building in your chest over the whole “coming of age” thing. In just a few days, on her 16^th birthday, Serenya would finally shift—if the old legends held true—and she’d bond with her horse spirit.

Everyone else seemed excited about it. Serenya? Not so much.

She hadn’t said it out loud, but something had been... off lately. A tightness in her gut, a strange flicker in the wind. Like the land was breathing differently. Like the stars were holding their breath.

And just like that—

The wind changed.

Not a breeze.

A shift.

Serenya shot upright, every hair on her body rising like soldiers answering roll call.

“Did you feel that?” she whispered, eyes scanning the horizon.

Her friends stopped mid-laugh. “Feel what?” Lira asked, glancing around.

“The wind. It—it wasn’t right. It was... different.”

“Different like... more dramatic than usual or—?”

“No, like...” Serenya frowned. “Like it was warning me.”

Kaelin exchanged a look with Riko and Lira. “You’re just nervous. It’s the shift nerves. It happens to everyone. My sister thought the tree outside our hut was whispering to her.”

“She also thought she was mated to a cloud,” Riko deadpanned.

But Serenya wasn’t listening anymore. The pull in her chest had turned into a yank. Something was wrong. Something was coming.

And then—

BOOM.

The sound cracked through the air like thunder, but it wasn’t thunder. It was drums.

War drums.

Every one of them froze, their laughter and teasing dying faster than a flame in the rain.

They turned, in unison, toward the horizon behind them. Thick smoke was curling into the sky above the trees. It was faint. But rising.

“No,” Lira whispered. “No no no—those are the real drums.”

“They wouldn’t be sounding those unless—”

Another BOOM.

This one closer.

Serenya was already on her feet.

“Serenya, wait!” Kaelin shouted. “We’re supposed to stay here—wait for the elders!”

“My family’s in there!” she shouted over her shoulder, sprinting down the slope. “And so is our Chief!”

“You don’t even have your spirit yet!”

“Then I’ll fight as me!”

The world blurred past her—the grass, the hills, her friends' shouts fading behind her like whispers in a storm. Her legs burned, her heart pounded, and the wind sliced against her cheeks, not soft anymore—but harsh. Demanding.

She didn’t stop.

Not even when the heat of fire kissed the air.

Not even when the first scream broke through the trees.

Not even when she saw the first fallen warrior, a spear lodged through his chest like a broken promise.

Serenya ran into the fire. Into the smoke. Into the nightmare. Not because she wasn’t afraid. But because something in her knew—she was meant for this.

The village was burning.

Screams shredded the air, blending with the clash of steel and the roar of war-cries. Tents collapsed in flames. Horses shrieked in terror as they tried to break free, eyes wild with panic.

And Serenya—

She didn’t stop running.

Not when her bare feet slid through blood-soaked dirt. Not when the acrid smoke clawed at her throat. Not even when she saw the first body she recognized—her aunt, the healer, her lifeless eyes still open toward the sky.

Her stomach heaved, but she choked it down. Later. She could break later.

She darted into the chaos, leaping over smoldering debris and broken weapons, searching for the faces she had to see—her mother, her father, her little brothers. She rounded the corner of the elders’ tent just in time to see her father drive a spear through the gut of an attacker, blood spraying across his chest.

“SERENYA!” he roared. “GET BACK!”

“Where’s Mom?!” she yelled, grabbing a fallen sword from the ground.

Her father didn’t answer. He was too busy cutting down another enemy—one of the monstrous things with pale eyes and blackened skin, creatures she didn’t recognize, weren’t supposed to exist. They moved too fast, too silent. Like ghosts.

“Serenya, go!” another warrior shouted, lunging toward her. She sliced his attempt to protect her with a glare and ducked past him.

She spotted her mother kneeling next to a child, shielding them both as fire crept closer.

Serenya didn’t hesitate.

She launched herself between the flame and her family, using the flat of her blade to beat back the fire while her arms wrapped around her mother and brother, hauling them to their feet.

“MOVE!” she screamed, coughing on the smoke.

The three of them ran, dodging fire and fallen kin, until they reached the center of the village—what used to be the communal gathering space. It was now a warzone.

Bodies were everywhere.

Half-shifted warriors lay tangled in the dirt. Hooves and limbs and claws and arrows. The sacred statue that represented their herd’s spirit lay cracked, its head snapped clean off.

She wanted to vomit again.

But she kept going.

Serenya fought like she had already shifted. Like the spirit within her had already chosen her. Rage made her faster. Grief made her stronger. Love made her impossible to stop.

She broke the ribs of a man twice her size.

She cut down a raider who had a blade at her cousin’s throat.

She wrapped her arms around a child, shielding them from flying debris, and carried them back through the fire again to safety.

She didn’t feel the cuts on her arms. The bruises. The searing pain in her legs. None of it mattered. Because her people were dying, and she was not going to let them fall alone.

Seasoned warriors tried to grab her—“It’s too dangerous!” they shouted.

She bit, kicked, elbowed her way out of their arms.

She had to keep moving.

She was almost to the temple hut—the safest place to hide civilians—when she heard it:

“SERENYA!”

The voice boomed like thunder.

She turned just in time to see the Chief himself charging through the fray—bloodied, burned, and still moving like a damn tank. He didn’t stop until he reached her, and then—

He grabbed her.

Threw her over his shoulder like she was a sack of grain.

“LET ME GO!” she screamed, pounding her fists against his back. “I’M NOT DONE! THEY’RE STILL IN THERE! I CAN SAVE THEM!”

“They’re gone, Serenya!” he shouted, his voice thick with smoke and pain. “The rest are lost!”

“No—NO! YOU DON’T KNOW THAT!”

She fought him all the way back through the fire line, kicking and cursing and sobbing until he finally set her down, panting and wild-eyed. Her mother was there, clutching her brothers, with her father right behind them. Others, too—maybe two dozen survivors, huddled together, singed and broken.

The Chief dropped to one knee, gasping for air.

And Serenya—

She lost it.

“What kind of Chief runs from a fight?! What kind of Chief lets his people BURN?!”

His eyes met hers, not with anger—but with guilt.

“We were overwhelmed. These creatures—they weren’t raiders. They were something else.”

“They were monsters!” she shrieked. “And you let them take us!”

“I didn’t—”

“I will never follow a man who won’t fight beside his people!”

Silence fell over the survivors.

Her words echoed like a death knell.

“I watched friends die. Children die. And you pulled me out?” she whispered, voice breaking. “Why? Why me?”

The Chief looked down at the ground. “Because you’re the last hope we’ve got, child.”

Her jaw trembled, lips parted, but no words came out. She couldn’t decide whether to slap him or sob.

All she knew was that they had lost more than a home tonight.

They had lost over half of their tribe. The last of their kind, now fractured and bleeding.

Serenya stared at the smoldering ruins. Her fists clenched.

She wouldn’t forget.

She couldn’t forget.

Whatever those creatures were… they had taken everything.

But she was still standing.

And she would find the rest of her kind. She would find the reason for that wind shift. For the dream. For the voice in her chest that had screamed Run.

And she would rise. Alone, if she had to. But never defeated.

*Two days later*

The fires had died down. The dead had been buried. The ground had been blessed.

But the wound left behind still ached in every heartbeat.

Tonight, however, the tribe gathered in something close to celebration—quiet, heavy with the weight of all they’d lost, but still sacred.

Serenya stood barefoot before the sacred flame in the center of the circle. Her hair had been braided by her mother, long black strands tied with bits of dyed sinew and hawk feathers. Her bare arms were painted with ochre and white, depicting the rising sun and the galloping herd. She wore a simple hide garment that stopped at her knees and a silver pendant at her throat shaped like a crescent moon.

Tonight, she would shift for the first time.

Her Coming of Age had arrived. Sixteen years old. And after everything—after blood and fire and loss—she would claim her spirit.

All around her, the tribe had formed a ring. Their whispers were hushed. The air hummed with magic as the spiritual leaders began their chant, calling on the ancient guardians to awaken her gift.

The Chief stood to her right, still bruised, but proud. On her left, her mother gripped her hand with silent strength.

“Serenya,” the High Elder called, voice crackling like dry leaves in autumn, “do you come of your own will?”

“I do.”

“Do you offer your heart to the herd, your body to the earth, and your soul to the Spirit of the Wild?”

“I do.”

“And what name do you claim, child of the Plains?”

The moment stilled.

Then the Chief stepped forward, voice solemn.

“She is no longer just Serenya, daughter of Deylan and Arava. She is now…”

He turned to the sky as the wind stirred.

“Solana Windhoof—she who carries the dawn on her back.”

A hush swept the tribe.

The name took hold like a spark in dry brush—lighting something ancient.

“Let the spirit come forth!” the elder bellowed.

The flames flared.

And Serenya—Solana—felt the change.

It started deep in her chest, a thrum like hooves on packed earth. Her bones ached, her muscles stretched, the world spun. Pain crackled through her like lightning—but she did not fall. She rose with it.

Her skin rippled. Her vision sharpened.

And with a blinding pulse of golden-white light—

She shifted.

The tribe gasped as one.

Before them stood a powerful buckskin mare, gold like sunrise, with dark legs and a raven mane streaked with sun-bleached strands. A white blaze marked her forehead, and her eyes—still Serenya’s eyes—blazed the color of a wild sky before a storm.

For a long time, no one moved.

Then a whisper broke the silence.

“By the gods… she bears the markings of the First Bloodline.”

“Buckskins haven’t been seen in centuries.”

“She is one of the sacred ones.”

“She was chosen.”

Solana shifted back, trembling slightly, but steady. “What are you talking about?”

The Chief stepped toward her, eyes wide with awe. “The First Bloodline were the original protectors of the herd. They carried the spirit of dawn and dusk—the balance between wild and wise. They were believed to be… blessed by the gods themselves.”

She blinked. “But I’m just me.”

He smiled sadly. “That’s exactly why.”

And then—

The wind shifted again.

But this time… it wasn’t just a breeze.

It was a call.

Serenya’s head snapped toward the horizon. Her skin prickled.

There, just beyond the trees, a distant howl rang through the dusk.

A wolf.

She wasn’t sure how she knew it wasn’t just any wolf… but something in her bones knew.

The others didn’t seem to hear it.

But Serenya’s heart beat faster.

The wind spoke again, and this time, it whispered only to her:

“The others have awakened. It is time.”