All Chapters of The Forgotten Heiress: Rise of The Lycan Queen: Chapter 241 - Chapter 244

Ash still clings to Seren’s cloak as she returns from Hollowreach.Not as dust.Not as soot.But in deliberate lines, stripes drawn by grief, symbols painted by fire and the dead. The remnants of sacrifice mark her arms like sacred ink, dark against her pale skin, like a language only the fallen could speak. She doesn’t brush them away.She wears them.They are part of her now.Her steps into Emberhold make no sound. No fanfare. No horns. No ceremonial call from the towers. But the city feels her arrival.Because they saw the sky burn when she left.And they saw no rage in her return.Only fire.Only resolve.The courtyard fills slowly at first. Wolves arrive first, silent and solemn, their ears twitching toward her as if tuning into a sound only they can hear. Then come the witches, their robes still wet with last night’s starlight. The humans follow, hesitantly, then more steadily. Farmers, smiths, apprentices, scribes. Finally, from shadowed corners, come the hybrids. The half-born

They spot the Dustborn scouts just as twilight begins to bleed the sky.Long shadows slip through the lower ashgroves, past the outer ridge lines and the collapsed ruins of the old watchtowers. Quick and quiet, like cinders caught in wind. They don’t number many. But they’re bold. Close enough to glimpse Emberhold’s outpost torches. Close enough to send whispers back to Sirelia.Close enough to mean danger.The message arrives as the sky deepens to bruised purple. Seren, still fresh from her communion with the Dustmother, stands in the high chamber of the keep, skin faintly touched with lingering silver from the altar runes. Her hair glows faintly where firelight catches it, and her voice, though quiet, draws silence around it like a spell.“Send a unit,” she says.“But not the Ashguard.”Her gaze moves through the room and lands on Vessa.“You lead.”The words strike like blade against anvil.Vessa stiffens.She’s commanded skirmishes. Held lines. Protected thrones and faces and flan