All Chapters of Bloodied Ashes: Chapter 51 - Chapter 60

Lira (POV)Every step away from him feels like leaving the edge of something—cliff or flame, I can’t tell which. The cold presses closer now, the snow crunching beneath my feet like bone, but I’m too warm to feel it. My fingers tremble. My mouth tastes like salt and something I don’t want to name. Behind me, the forest exhales. I don’t look back.The tether doesn’t stir. Not really. It sits like a low pulse under the skin, quiet and coiled. Even it seems unsure now—like it's waiting to see what I’ll choose next.When I reach the cabin again, Kael’s already inside.He doesn’t speak. Just lifts his gaze from the blade he’s cleaning and passes me a canteen of water. Our fingers brush as I take it, and my wolf lifts her head—but only slightly. She’s tired too.I don’t thank him. I don’t drink it. But I hold it anyway.Kael doesn’t follow me to the cot. Doesn’t press. He just returns to his post near the door, body braced like he’s preparing for something with teeth.I crawl back onto the

Lira (POV)By the time we find shelter, the sky has sunk into itself, all light drained from the edges. The cave is barely that—a low cut in the ridge’s flank, masked by hanging root and stone—but it’s deep enough to hold us. Hidden enough to make me uneasy.Kael circles it once, then again. Silent. Methodical. When he signals that it’s safe, I step inside.Immediately, my skin prickles.My lungs tighten. The stone smells like breath and bone. Like something exhaled here just hours ago and didn’t mean for us to find it. My wolf doesn’t lunge—but she circles. Watches. Waits.The air is warmer here than it should be. Faintly musky. Beneath the scent of damp stone and dry moss, I catch it—fur. Ash. Heat.Recent.“They were here,” I murmur.Kael doesn’t ask who. His silence confirms what I already know: wolves.We set camp low and lean. No fire. No light. Just instinct and tension in equal measure. We eat what’s left from our packs—cold, tasteless—but it’s enough. He passes me a dried str

Lira (POV)A younger rogue—barely more than a boy, maybe sixteen in human years—moves forward on hands and knees. He crawls to Kael and bows low, pressing his forehead to the snow.“You live,” the boy says. “You were the storm beneath the Pit. We heard the chains fall.”Kael exhales through his nose. Not quite a growl. Not quite breath.“I didn’t do it for you,” he says.The boy looks up. “No. But we still followed the sound.”The scarred woman turns back to me.“You’re not his Luna,” she says. “That’s not what the spiral means.”“No,” I agree. “It isn’t.”She nods once. “Good. That would make this prophecy crueler.”“Prophecy,” Kael snaps. “There it is.”The elder tilts her head. “You don’t believe in stories?”“I’ve bled in too many,” he growls. “Watched too many die trying to fit inside them.”The woman hums. “Then don’t fit. Rewrite.”She looks back at me.“You wear the mark. You walk with fire. The old line ends with you—or through you. We don’t serve Alphas here. But we do serve

Lira (POV)The trees here grow like they remember what came before. Crooked. Bone-thin. Covered in black lichen that flakes like rot when you brush past. Even the snow beneath them isn’t clean—stained with old ash, marbled with rust-colored melt lines like veins under skin.Beneath the crust, old things waited. Splinters of bone, gnawed and half-fused to root systems. Burned fur strands embedded in frostbite. Someone had scratched spiral runes into a fallen trunk and left offerings—small teeth, twisted twine, the kind of things you left behind when you wanted the Wilds to remember your name. This wasn’t a place wolves passed through. It was a place they came to bleed.We’d set up camp just below the ridgeline, tucked behind a sloped wedge of rock that blocked the worst of the wind. Kael said nothing when I collapsed onto the ground, knees aching, breath fogging. He just dropped his satchel and walked to the edge, staring down into the Hollow.It was quiet.Not the good kind of quiet.

Lira (POV)The snow was gone. The wind, the trees, the sky—all gone. Like the world had blinked with me and opened on something else.I was standing. Upright. Unshivering. In a room that wasn’t mine, with no windows, no corners—just breathing stone. The walls pulsed like lungs. Black veins ran through them in spirals, pulsing with light I didn’t want to name. It smelled like marrow. Like memory rotting. The air buzzed with something familiar. Too familiar.My spiral burned. Not the mark. My whole body.Kael stood across from me. But not him. Not really.His shape was right. Shoulders broad. Hands loose at his sides. The scent—pine, smoke, storm. But the eyes... Too bright. Too green. Wrong in a way I couldn’t look at directly. They glowed like they could see through me, down to the marrow, and liked what they found.He smiled. Crooked. Easy. Mean.“I’d never leave you,” he said, voice soft.I didn’t breathe. My knees locked. My ribs pressed inward like they didn’t trust my he