Grey Deer Black Clover Novels & Stories

More time passed and the knock never came again. Ebony camellia. Another one of those shades she hadn't experimented. She was lured by its name as it portrayed her mood: Dark, straight from hell, and excruciatingly hurt. Louisa had had enough of staying indoors for it made her idle and think like crazy. A little bit of work would clear her head as she believed.

Lucifer growled through gritted teeth, directing his question inwardly to his wolf, Annihilator, who had been silent ever since April's disappearance. There was a pause before Annihilator responded, his voice a deep, resonant rumble that echoed within Lucifer's mind. *I lost the scent in the forest,* Annihilator admitted, his tone heavy with the weight of failure. *Someone used oak flower on her—it masks the scent completely. We’ve been outmaneuvered.*

Agarez led her to a bluff, a place of high ground and relative safety, with deep, dense forest below. As if tasting the tantalizing aroma of fresh food brought to their doorsteps in person, the entire forest opened its hideous mouth and bared its fangs as if the dreaded beast was hungry. Evelyn saw one bright flower after another bloom on the bare ground below the cliff, the flowers emitting a strange and enchanting odor, and soon the dense forest was filled with a lavender mist. As if they had self-awareness, the dark flesh-eating trees slowly approached Evelyn and Agarez, spreading their withered branches like old men.

I whispered, feeling dubious of his suggestion. "There's an herb native to this area only, Juliana. It's strong enough to put them all into comas if they ingest it." Chasel crouched to the floor and began to draw in the dirt with his finger. I joined him, squatting down. "It's shaped like this, and it has a tinge of emerald or chartreuse green on the very edges. Like Sambucus, the majority is so dark green that it almost appears black. The plant is also known as 'Black Beauty'."

She smells faintly of the same soap Nathan used. She’s accompanied by Allegra, Priestess of Nora’s Crone coven. “Thank you, Grey,” Devin says. She nods, then looks at me—pity in her eyes. Like she wants to say something, but thinks better of it. She shakes her head and walks away. Before I can ask what that was about, Devin turns to me. “I need you to give Allegra some of your blood. She’ll replicate the scrying, confirm your findings, and then we move.”

The twilight in Blackwater did not bring peace; it brought the awakening of horrors that the daylight kept cowed. Helena Moore was just a few meters from her porch when the air froze. It was not the cold of the mountain, but the vacuum of sound that precedes the predator’s leap. From the darkness between the pines, three silhouettes emerged. They were not the hunters from before, but something more organized, more lethal. They were members of the Iron Claws, mercenaries who reeked of dried blood and ancient hatred.

The moon had bled into a thin crescent by the time Elara returned to the manor, her boots leaving bloody footprints across the stone threshold. The chase through the forest had been brutal, branches whipping her face, lungs burning, hybrid senses screaming every direction the cloaked figure turned. She had lost them at the river’s edge, the water swallowing scent and sound like a grave. But the cloak she now clutched in her fist, torn from a low branch during the pursuit, was unmistakable; Blackthorn black, edged with the subtle silver embroidery reserved for inner-circle betas.

The cold rays of the moon peeked through the spine leaves of BlackIris forest. BlackIris, an impenetrable forest known for its darkness along with the buried secrets imbibed in it. A quiet and soothing river named Fairy Tears that stream in the heart of the forest functions as a wood barrier between two natural elevations Ardna Chirig and Ayruzglow.

A pouch of dried juniper — her own makeshift warding charm, not much, but it had worked before. The forest was colder than it should’ve been. The pale white trees loomed in the darkness. Still, silent. But at their center… The black stalk had grown. No longer a shoot. Now a small tree. Its bark throbbed gently, like it had a pulse. Beneath its base, something else was growing. Clara knelt. Her fingers brushed away moss and frost, and her breath caught. It was a symbol. Carved directly into the soil. The split tree. Black and gold.

POV: Aria Monroe The Grove led them. Not with words. Not with signs. But with memory. Aria walked in silence, Luna’s hand tucked into hers, Kaelion a shadow at her side. The trees parted for them, their branches bending low, their roots shifting subtly beneath the moss. The air grew colder, heavier. Every breath Aria took felt like it stirred something ancient. They reached the edge of a clearing unlike any Aria had seen before. The trees here were blackened—not burned, but darkened by time. The ground was bare, stripped of moss and bloom. At the center stood a stone altar, cracked and weathered, etched with runes that pulsed faintly in the moonlight.