Semua Bab Against All Odds: Bab 101 - Bab 110

* Zeina *It was near sunset by the time Doctor Isolde returned.She swept into the chamber without knocking, she never did when it was necessary, her long coat dusted with mountain ash, her sharp silver hair braided back like a blade drawn tight. The faint clink of vials and bone-charms rang from the belt at her hip, each one warded, each one earned.Donna moved aside to let her pass, but not before murmuring, "She nearly fainted again."Isolde's eyes found me instantly. "And you didn't summon me immediately because...?""I wasn't unconscious," I muttered."You were close," Donna snapped.Isolde ignored the bickering tone, kneeling with the effortless grace of a woman who had crouched beside battlefield wounds and birthing beds alike. Her hands were cool and clinical, one pressed against the side of my throat, the other low over my abdomen. A pulse of warmth spread through her palm, diagnostic magic, clean and old.Her brow furrowed, but there was no alarm in her voice."You're exact

* Zeina *I didn't sleep that night, the thoughts of chaos in the West kept me up. Even with the vial Isolde gave me resting on the table by the bed, unopened. I sat upright long after the moon crested the mountains, my hand curved protectively around my belly, listening. To the silence. To the wind. To the heartbeat inside me.And then, just before dawn broke over the ridges, I felt it.Not a knock. Not a howl. But the shift in the air that comes before steel is drawn. It was as if the mountain exhaled sharply, and the wind carried blood in its breath.I rushed to the eastern balcony of the stronghold, my vision sweeping across the jagged treeline below.Smoke.A pale thread at first, rising from just beyond Blackwind Valley. Then two. Then five.No horns were sounded. No banners raised. But the war had begun. The first blade had been drawn. Wolves have shown their fangs.A soldier scrambled into the war chamber, panting. "Rogues. And something worse. They came through the fog. No wa

* Cerberus *The Hollow Mountain was quiet.Not silent, no, silence could never exist in a place like this. The trees themselves whispered in the wind, murmuring through their twisted boughs as if echoing a language older than the bones of the earth. Magic here was not spoken, but breathed, and tonight it grieved.I stood beneath the arching canopy of black-needled pines, a shallow crescent of earth cut from the world around it, ringed with witchfire and stone. They called it The Hollow of Remembrance, sacred ground to the witches of the Northwood Coven. And it was here that I had brought him.My grandfather.The last of the Blackfang line before me, a relic of an age so violent it had no name. And now, just bones and blood soaked in cloth, wrapped in the traditional wolfhide burial shroud of our ancestors.The witches circled us, veils draped across their faces, their voices low and humming in harmony. Each tone carried a memory. A sorrow. A promise."Ila'vhen drasi, soren malae..."

* Cerberus *Two Days Later, on the Western Pass. The wind was sharper here. Harsher. It dragged through the ravines of the western cliffs like a mourning song, cold and laced with the lingering tang of smoke and blood that refused to fade, even now. It clung to the stones. To the bones. To the breath. I could taste it in the back of my throat, ash and memory, grief and grit.The Hollow was far behind me now. My grandfather's grave lay beneath the roots of the Mourning Tree, his bones returned to the land that once birthed his fire. The witches had chanted until their voices grew raw, until their magic soaked into the ground like rain, until I could no longer feel where his legacy ended and my burden began. I'd bled into that earth. I'd given it my howl, my rage, my sorrow. I'd asked it to take the part of me I could no longer carry.But grief doesn't leave. Not truly. It settles in the marrow. It makes a home in silence. It echoes in footsteps and forgotten laughter.Now, only one th

* Cerberus *The scent of iron had faded from her skin, replaced by something softer, something impossibly fragile, like crushed petals and smoke. But I still caught the undercurrent of strain. I could hear it in her breathing when she thought I wasn't listening, in the way she moved, just a little slower, just a little more carefully than she used to.She never complained. That wasn't Zeina's way. But her body spoke what her pride refused to say.The next morning, I stood just beyond the training grounds, watching the warriors run drills under Beta Kael's sharp commands. He was a storm when he trained them, relentless and precise. But even now, he glanced toward the Keep between orders, checking on her. He was worried. We all were.A blur of motion drew my eye to the eastern corridor. Donna emerged, breathless, her hands wringing the edge of her cloak. The moment she saw me, she veered from her path and made straight for where I stood."She hasn't eaten today," she said without pream