I emerge on a snow-packed ridge under a sky still simmering with night. Moonlight silvers the peaks; wind scythes across open rock. The altitude is lower than the observatory, yet the air smells thicker, laced with pine resin and woodsmoke creeping from distant hearths. Territory of the Shadow Pack.
I draw my first full breath of exile. Frost explodes in my lungs, bright and wild. The vision’s after-taste lingers—but beneath it, a strange steadiness unfurls. The world does not end in a single heartbeat. It begins ending, slowly, monstrously, and that stretch gives room for action.
The portal behind me collapses with a sigh. Starlight drains into the sigils and blinks out. I tap the obsidian rim twice to erase coordinates; powder sifts away in the wind. Without runes, the ring resembles an innocuous circle of black stones half buried in snow. Good.
I slide the pack off one shoulder, retrieve a slim compass carved from storm-dragon tooth, and hold it at eye level. The needle spins, then steadies, pointing north-northwest—toward the shrine. Toward the altar where blood once answered prophecy with sacrifice.
Snow begins to fall, soft flakes that cling to lashes and the fresh crystal at my collar. I lift the hood of my tunic, though fabric rasps against the new facets and sparks discomfort. The gift and curse of turn-stone skin: it aches, yet it cannot be cut; it burns, yet frost finds no purchase.
Boots crunch as I start down the ridge. Each step radiates pain through the web of cracks, but I welcome the clarity it brings. Pain keeps the mind awake. Pain is the ticket price for truth.
Somewhere ahead, a wolf howls—long, low, layered with raw grief. Another voice answers, higher and sharper, echoing Yarrow’s name. The sound threads under the moon, seeking a reply that never comes.
I close my eyes mid-stride and answer, not with my throat but with pulse-magic. A single reverberating note slips through stone and snow, carrying solace where words would ring hollow.The howl fades, replaced by silence that feels less empty, perhaps only to me.
I quicken pace. Dawn hovers behind the eastern peaks, warming the horizon to pewter. My breath fogs, and the crystal in my ribs aches with each lungful, but the road ahead draws me as surely as gravity draws rivers downhill.
This is the beginning. The sanctuary watches my back, the shrine pulls my feet, and somewhere in the dark between them, an alpha grieving his dead awaits a prophecy he never asked for.
I promised the stars I would not fail them again. And the stars, as ever, remain indifferent—but they blaze fiercely behind thinning cloud, guiding even a creature half woman, half mineral. Guiding, and judging, and witnessing.
Let them witness me now. I will outrun the collapse if only long enough to bend its trajectory. I will walk until the stone in my heart either shatters or hardens into a new shape the realms can lean upon.
Snow crunches. Breath burns. The ridge falls away beneath my stride, and I move forward, alone but no longer apart, into the shivering stillness of the world that waits to be saved.
2
KYLAN
Dusk paints the high valley in knife-thin bands of copper and wine. The color never lingers; wind scrapes it off the sky and carries it west before the first stars dare to show. I kneel beside the boundary stone and press my bare hand to the runes, letting its hum roll through bone. It should throb steady as a mountain heart. Tonight the pulse staggers.
“Talk to me, old friend,” I whisper. Frost feathers across the granite surface, blooms, then retreats as if the stone breathes. When I was a pup, this ward flared bright amber even in daylight. My father said the glow meant the realms remembered their promises. Now it flickers the way dying coals do—one flare, long pause, then another, each weaker than the last.
Behind me the pack rustles—thirteen wolves in twilight camouflage, coats smoky or pale depending on lineage, eyes reflecting what little light remains. They keep their distance while I listen because an alpha at the border is half spirit himself; touch him during communion and the ward may taste the wrong heartbeat.
I close my eyes. Granite song turns raspy, as though glass grains grind in the current. Something presses from the farside—soft at first, almost teasing, then a rigid shove. The sigils brighten, swing toward crimson.
“Shadow pressure climbing,” I call without turning. “Positions.”
Feet scud along snow-dusted grass. A small body bumps my shoulder—Yarrow. The cub tries to seal his excitement, but he’s only twelve summers; emotion leaks through every pore. “Alpha, I can help. Let me anchor the east arc.”
“You anchor nothing,” I answer, keeping voice gentle. Yarrow’s blond fur fringe bristles anyway—tiny affronted alpha in training. “You stand thirty paces back and watch how it’s done. When you’re older, the stone will know your name.”
He scowls. “It already does.” To prove the point, he lifts a claw, scratches his initials—Y.W.—on a patch of frost. The letters glow gold, then gutter to black soot.
My stomach knots; the ward only echoes bloodlines it trusts. That trust shouldn’t bend to a cub’s impatience. “Back,” I repeat, firmer.
Yarrow huffs, but trots to where Beta Rowan waits. I turn full attention to the threat pressing through.
Darkness seeps around the stone in ribbons, each tendril twitching, tasting the new moon night. Not mere absence of light—this gloom moves with purpose. The first strand coils around my wrist before I can dodge. Cold shoots up forearm, plunges into elbow. I shift halfway—bone distending, fur sprouting—then clamp down; full transformation too close to the stone could crack it beyond repair.
I snarl instead, voice layered human and wolf. “Not yours, carrion breath.” I twist, letting claws slide just far enough to slash the tendril. Black fluid beads on tips, evaporates. The severed ribbon writhes across the snow, searching for another host.
Behind me Rowan gives orders. “North arc, fangs out. South wing, hold.” Torches spit blue witch-fire. Shadows shrink from the light, then surge as a single mass toward Yarrow’s group.
“Beta—shield the cubs!” I bellow.
Too late. One tendril spears Yarrow’s chest. He jerks as if struck by a crossbow bolt, then goes still. The shadow melts inside his skin. Hair lightens to gray, eyes roll back, only the whites showing. He turns toward me with a smile that isn’t his.
