All Chapters of Shattered Vows, Silent Fire : Chapter 11 - Chapter 20

The Gate of BetrayersThe scent of blood was the first thing Lyra noticed when they returned to Blackfang Keep.Not just any blood.Royal blood.The courtyard was deserted, but the gates… the gates were different now.Once etched with the sigil of Kael’s ancestors, a fierce wolf cast in obsidian and moonlight, they now bore a second symbol carved beneath—a blazing spiral of fire laced in silver, identical to the brand Lyra bore on her back. And across both, smeared in deliberate strokes, was a mark known only to Kael.He stilled beside her. His breathing changed.“That’s my mother’s crest,” he murmured, voice edged in steel. “Only she would leave it like that. Not painted. Carved with claws.”Lyra stepped closer, her fingers trailing over the rough gouges in the wood.“She’s alive?”Kael nodded, but something in his jaw twitched. “Which means the Hollowed Ones have her—or she’s helping them.”Lyra flinched. “You think she’s betrayed you?”Kael didn’t answer.Because deep down, they bo

The symbol carved into the tree glowed faintly under the moonlight—a crescent split by a dagger. It pulsed, as if alive, a sigil steeped in malice.Lyra stepped closer, heart thundering.“It’s fresh,” she whispered, running her fingers along the groove. The sap oozed slowly from the bark, sticky and red—unnaturally red. Like blood.Kael stood behind her, his posture rigid, one hand still curled around the hilt of his dagger. His eyes scanned the darkness beyond the trees. “This isn’t a warning. It’s a message.”“They knew we were coming,” Lyra said. “They’re watching.”Kael’s lips curled in a silent snarl. “Or someone told them.”The accusation hung in the air, thick and poisonous. They both knew what he meant—there was a traitor among their allies. Maybe within the very circle that had pledged their loyalty to the Flame-Blooded Queen.Lyra’s hands balled into fists. “We can’t go back. Not yet.”Kael didn’t argue. He never did when her voice dropped to that low, commanding register—th

The air in the camp shifted.It was a subtle thing—at first. A strange weight pressing against Lyra’s chest as the sun dipped behind jagged mountain peaks, bleeding gold and crimson into the horizon. But then came the whispers. Thin, silken voices that crept through the pines, brushing past her ears like spiderwebs. The soul-queen’s voice had grown louder since the projection from the Hollowed Ones, but now it was insistent, pulsing in her skull like a second heartbeat.“You are not one of them. They will destroy you the moment you falter.”Lyra sat atop a boulder overlooking the campfires of the allied packs. The valley below shimmered in twilight, tents clustered like silent sentinels. Smoke curled into the sky. Voices rose—snapping with tension. Arguments. Accusations. Suspicion had burrowed its way into the alliance like a parasite.And all of it was because of her.The soul-queen whispered again.“Let them tear each other apart. You have no need for loyalty from sheep.”Lyra pres

The forest pulsed with tension, its shadows coiling like silent serpents around Lyra and Kael as they moved deeper into the ancient woodland. The moon, high above, bled silver light through the dense canopy, painting their path in ethereal hues. The trees whispered in an unknown tongue—one that Lyra could almost understand. Almost.Each step Kael took was purposeful, but his body was taut, ready to strike. His hand never strayed far from the dagger strapped at his side, and his gaze never left the shifting dark. Lyra walked beside him, her senses heightened, her skin alive with tingling awareness. Since her encounter with the Hollowed Ones, something within her had shifted—her instincts, once dulled by fear, now vibrated with energy she didn’t know she possessed.“We’re close,” Kael murmured, halting near a moss-draped boulder. “Do you hear it?”She strained, closing her eyes. At first, only silence. Then—faint and haunting—the sound of humming. A melody that danced on the wind, ancie

The Crimson Pact.Lyra couldn’t shake the weight of those words as she sat on the edge of the ruined barracks, her legs dangling over blood-stained stone. The fire had long since burned out, but her skin still prickled with the stranger’s presence. His face. His voice. That promise of return.Beside her, Kael remained silent. Not out of indifference—his fury simmered just beneath the surface—but because the threads of this prophecy were tightening, looping around them both like a noose.“They’ll come sooner than the next moon,” he said at last.Lyra didn’t respond. She was too lost in memory—what little she had. Her mother’s voice, always soft but edged with warning. The bedtime stories she never finished. The necklace she made Lyra promise never to take off—now cracked, the gem at its center dull as stone.“Kael,” she said quietly, “what do you know about the Crimson Pact?”His jaw tensed. “Only stories. Old ones. Too old for most packs to still believe.”“Tell me.”He turned to her,