The white fire didn't burn...it, unmade.
Selene's scream never left her throat as the explosion tore through her, peeling back layers of flesh and memory until only raw essence remained. The world dissolved into fractals of light and shadow, time splintering into a thousand jagged pieces.
For an eternity that lasted less than a heartbeat, she was the fire.
Then...
Impact.
Selene came back to herself sprawled across steaming stone, her body wracked with phantom pains where the markings had seared deepest. The air reeked of lightning and burnt hair, the afterimage of the blast still dancing behind her eyelids.
Cyrus lay motionless beside her, his chest a ruin of charred flesh and glowing sigils. But it was the silence that terrified her...the absolute absence of the First Shadow's whispers that had haunted her every step.
"Kael?" Her voice emerged shredded.
A shadow detached itself from the cliff face.
Kael staggered toward her, his body a tapestry of fresh wounds. The borrowed shadows that had filled his hollow core now moved with eerie independence, twining around his limbs like living smoke. His eyes...once golden...now swirled with voids darker than midnight.
"Still with you," he rasped.
The bond between them shuddered, reforged in the white fire's crucible into something sharper, hungrier. Selene could feel his heartbeat thundering in time with hers, could taste the copper tang of his pain on her tongue.
Then the mountain groaned.
Where the First Shadow had been emerging, the earth now formed a perfect crater...its edges glassy smooth, its depths pulsing with residual energy. At its center...
Roran.
Or what remained of him.
His herald form had been stripped back to bare flesh, his body curled fetal around the rusted hunting knife protruding from his sternum. The blue fire in his veins guttered weakly, his lips moving around silent words.
Selene's claws flexed. "Is she...?"
"Gone." Kael's voice held no triumph. "But not dead."
A wet chuckle bubbled from Roran's lips. "Never... dead." His remaining eye rolled toward them, the pupil slit like a cat's. "Just... waiting."
Then his body collapsed inward...bones fracturing, skin flaking to ash...until only the knife remained, its blade now etched with those same damning symbols.
Cyrus stirred with a gasp. "The vessel..."
Selene caught him as he tried to rise. His burns were already knitting together, the markings on his chest now silver scars. "What about it?"
His hand closed around her wrist, his grip fever-hot. "The white fire purified it. The knife can hold her now...but only if we finish what your mother started."
A howl echoed through the valley...not of triumph, but of hunger. The corrupted wolves had survived the blast. And they were coming.
Kael retrieved the knife, his shadows recoiling from its touch. "Then we end this at the keep."
The blade pulsed in his grip.
And deep beneath them, something stirred in answer.
The Blood Moon's Gift
Dawn should have broken by the time they reached the keep's outer walls.
Instead, the Blood Moon hung heavier than ever, its crimson light warping the very air. The gates stood broken, the courtyard beyond littered with...
Bodies.
Not dead.
Changing.
Pack members twitched on the ground, their bones audibly reshaping beneath skin that rippled like liquid. One warrior's spine elongated grotesquely, his screams cutting off as his jaw unhinged with a wet pop. Another clawed at her own face as a second mouth split open across her forehead.
Selene's shadows writhed in warning. "The First Shadow's touch..."
Kael's grip on the knife tightened. "She's remaking them in her image."
A familiar roar shook the courtyard.
Alpha Orric emerged from the great hall...or what the Blood Moon had made of him. His massive wolf form now sported six eyes and too many teeth, his pelt streaked with glowing blue veins. But it was the intelligence burning in those eyes that chilled Selene most.
He was still in there.
And he recognized them.
"Traitors," he snarled, the word distorted by his malformed muzzle.
Kael stepped forward, the knife gleaming in his grip. "Father..."
Orric lunged.
The battle was short and brutal.
Kael moved with his shadows' newfound grace, dodging strikes that should have torn him apart. But it wasn't enough...not against an Alpha warped by cosmic power.
A glancing blow sent Kael crashing into the well, the knife skittering from his grasp. Orric loomed over him, drool sizzling where it hit the stones.
"Pathetic," he growled. "You were never worthy of..."
Cyrus's arrow took him through the eye.
The Alpha staggered...just enough for Selene to dive for the knife.
Her fingers closed around the hilt.
And the world screamed.
The First Shadow's Whisper
"Little vessel."
The voice coiled through Selene's mind like smoke, sweet as poisoned honey. The knife grew heavier in her grip, its markings flaring to life.
"You cannot win. But you can rule with me."
Visions flooded her...a world reshaped in her image, Kael at her side, their bond magnified a thousand fold by the First Shadow's power. No more running. No more fear. Just endless night and the songs of the void.
All it would cost was surrender.
Kael's roar shattered the trance.
"Selene!"
She drove the knife into the earth.
The resulting shockwave sent friend and foe alike tumbling. The very stones trembled as ancient power surged upward...not from the blade, but from beneath the keep.
From the original altar.
The one built atop the First Shadow's prison.
Cyrus's eyes widened. "She's been here all along."
The ground split open.
And the true battle began.