CHAPTER12
992 Words
Chapter Twelve: Tension Beneath the Stone
Aria’s POV
I used to dream of being free.
Now, I dream of chains, long, shadow-wrapped chains that slither out of the ground and curl around my ankles, pulling me downward into silence.
I wake every night breathless, heart hammering, drenched in sweat.
I thought it was the guilt of my sister, but no, it was something different.
The dreams of the Hunt never leave me.
Darius says the dreams are visions—residual traces of my bloodline awakening—but they feel more like warnings. Like something ancient is trying to claw its way back into the world, and I’m the door.
I spent the morning in the Council gardens, away from their glares and hushed whispers. The roses were blooming late this year, pale as bone and oddly scentless, like the land itself was holding its breath.
I wasn't alone for long.
Kael found me.
I didn’t speak at first.
His footsteps slowed behind me, and I could feel the weight of his hesitation like a thundercloud building overhead.
“You’ve changed,” he said quietly.
“I had to,” I replied without turning around.
“I didn’t know she was alive, Aria,” he added. “Keira, she told me you were gone. She gave me your pendant… your blood.”
“And you believed her,” I said softly.
He said nothing.
After a long silence, I finally faced him. “What do you want, Kael?”
“To understand,” he said. “To fix what I broke.”
I laughed, bitter and sharp. “You can’t fix this. You can’t put my voice back in my throat, or erase the power that cracked open when you turned your back.”
Kael flinched. “Then what do I do?”
I studied him and really looked at him.
The Alpha who had once made my heart race now looked… unsure. Haunted.
“You start by not standing in my way,” I said.
Kael’s POV
She didn’t look at me the same way anymore.
And maybe she never will again.
But watching her walk away straight-backed, silver-eyed, the air bending around her like a storm ready to break—I knew one thing for certain.
Aria was no longer mine.
She was becoming theirs.
The land’s. The bloodlines. The prophecies.
And I didn’t know if I’d be able to protect her when they turned against her.
Or if she even needed my protection anymore.
Elder Omega’s POV
“We should exile her,” Councilor Renn growled, pacing the stone floor. “Seal her powers and banish her before she brings ruin to everything we’ve built.”
“Exile Aria?” I asked, calm but cold. “You want to exile the one who saved your lives?”
“She didn’t save us. She commanded beasts with a single word. She unsealed something that should have remained buried.”
I narrowed my eyes. “You mean she didn’t bury it deep enough for you to sleep peacefully.”
The Council chamber hummed with unrest. Some supported Aria. Others feared her.
They called her a danger, a blessing, a key.
But none of them knew what she truly was.
Not yet.
Only the bloodline knew.
And the Hunt.
Darius’s POV
I followed the scent trail down the tunnels beneath the tower.
The old library had been closed for decades after the Great Rift War, but last night, Aria had mentioned hearing movements down here.
I didn’t doubt her.
The stone beneath our feet was changing. Cracking. Listening.
I pushed deeper into the catacombs, torchlight flickering off damp stone and faded glyphs etched in ancient script.
Then I saw it.
A mark scorched into the floor fresh, blackened in a perfect spiral. Not ink. Not blood.
Ash.
I knelt down, fingers grazing the centre.
Warm.
Still breathing.
The Hunt wasn’t waiting anymore.
It was stirring.
And it was beneath us.
Aria’s POV
That evening, I stood before the sealed gate of the archives.
The whispers had grown stronger since sunrise, low, urgent, insistent, voices pressing against my mind like claws scratching on the inside of my skull.
“Blood to open. Voice to command.”
I didn’t remember walking here. My body had moved by instinct, pulled like a magnet toward whatever pulsed beyond the gate.
My hand hovered over the ancient metal.
“I wouldn’t,” Darius said from behind me.
I turned slowly.
“I wasn’t going to,” I lied.
He raised a brow. “You’re shaking.”
I looked down.
He was right.
My fingertips were trembling, and the surrounding air… it was shimmering, like heat rising from sunbaked stone.
“I think it wants to open itself,” I whispered.
Darius stepped closer. “Then we needed to seal it. Or find out what it’s tied to.”
“Keira said something,” I remembered. “That the Hunt was bound here. That the Vale bloodline wasn’t power… it was bait.”
Darius’s expression darkened.
“That changes everything.”
It happened during dusk or a full moon.
The first tremor struck as the guards were changing posts. Barely noticeable. Like a single heartbeat echoing beneath stone.
Then the second.
Louder.
The birds stopped singing.
By the time the third tremor hit, the stone fountain in the middle of the courtyard cracked straight down the centre.
Council members poured out of the chambers.
Kael, already halfway to the main stairs, froze mid-step.
Aria was at the top of the courtyard stairs, her hair loose, eyes wide.
She wasn’t causing it.
But it was responding to her.
From deep beneath the earth, a sound echoed.
A howl.
Not like a wolf.
Not like a man.
Like a god forgotten by time, remembering its hunger.
And then
The ground beneath the capital split open with a roar of fire and ash.
From the rift
Golden eyes.
And the hunt rose.
- Writer
