Chapter 5
1117 Words
Seraphina woke to the scent of ash and wind.
For a moment, she forgot where she was. The stone ceiling above her wasn’t the cell she died in, nor the palace where she once ruled beside a monster. It was somewhere in-between—a place of waiting. A place of war.
The bond tethered to Caelum still hummed faintly from the night before. His kiss lingered on her lips like a bruise, tender but dangerous. And yet, it wasn’t the kiss that unsettled her.
It was the memory of that child.
Find her, my son.
She could still hear Darian’s voice echoing in the dark of her mind.
Her son.
The one taken.
In the War Room
Rheon, Caelum, and three of the den’s lieutenants stood around a large map carved into blackstone. Seraphina entered, and all eyes shifted to her like metal pulled to a magnet.
“We found something,” Rheon said. “A witch spy tried to escape from Darian’s outpost. She didn’t make it far, but before she died, she said one word.”
He looked directly at Seraphina.
“‘Ashbringer.’”
The room fell into silence.
Caelum’s face hardened. “That was your title, wasn’t it? In the old bloodlines. Before you were erased.”
“It was more than a title,” Seraphina murmured. “It was a threat.”
Ashbringers were rare—a bloodline of werewolves born with fire in their veins, feared by wolves and witches alike. Most were hunted to extinction during the First Cleansing. Only one remained.
Her.
“Then why would a witch whisper it?” Rheon asked. “Unless Darian’s hiding something.”
“Or someone,” Caelum added darkly.
Seraphina leaned over the map, eyes scanning an area west of the mountain ranges—The Withered Vale.
“Where no pack dares tread,” she whispered.
Caelum frowned. “That place is cursed.”
“Good,” she said. “So am I.”
She tapped the edge of the Vale. “This is where he’s keeping my son.”
Rheon inhaled slowly. “How can you be sure?”
Seraphina’s voice darkened. “Because that’s where I was remade.”
Flashback: The Rebirth
The memory had returned in pieces, but the pain was whole.
She remembered the underground chamber—silver chains laced with wolfsbane, the ceremonial fire. Darian hadn’t just killed her. He offered her soul to something older. A pact. A ritual. One that stole her children and ripped her spirit apart.
They called it the Forsaken Rite. A witch-born corruption, twisted and illegal. Darian had performed it in secret, using her blood to open a conduit into forbidden realms.
But her body refused to stay dead.
And when the moon rose full and red, she clawed her way from the grave with fire in her lungs.
That was the day the world believed the Ashbringer was no more.
They were wrong.
Present
Seraphina looked up, eyes glowing faintly.
“If we don’t get to him first,” she said, “Darian will turn him. Shape him into a weapon. My own blood, turned against me.”
Caelum stepped beside her, fingers brushing hers in quiet solidarity. “Then we strike first.”
“I want the Vale burned to the roots.”
“Then give the order,” Rheon said.
Seraphina didn’t hesitate. “Gather the Shadow Pack. We move by dusk.”
The Calm Before
As preparations for war stirred through the mountain, Seraphina sat alone in her chamber, rewrapping the bandage over the sigil burned into her palm. She'd tried using herbs, even calling on her own inner fire to cauterize it. Nothing worked.
The mark was spreading.
Caelum entered quietly.
He paused. “You’re bleeding again.”
She didn’t look at him. “It hasn’t stopped since the pool.”
“That’s not normal.”
“Neither am I.”
He walked over, kneeling in front of her.
“May I?” he asked softly.
She nodded, and he took her hand, unwrapping the bandage with delicate fingers. The mark glowed—crimson, jagged like lightning.
“She’s waking,” Caelum said under his breath.
Seraphina tensed. “Who?”
“The goddess they buried inside you. The one you were never supposed to become.”
She stared at him. “I don’t want a throne.”
“Good,” he said. “Because this isn’t about power. It’s about blood.”
He kissed the center of her palm, just above the mark. A pulse of fire bloomed from her skin into his.
For a moment, they both gasped—bond flaring like an exposed nerve.
“You keep doing that,” she said, voice hoarse.
“What?”
“Making it hard not to want you.”
Caelum’s grin turned feral. “Then stop trying.”
She let him pull her to her feet.
His hands slipped beneath her shirt, resting over the mark on her hip—the one Darian carved there long ago. But instead of flinching, she burned that memory down, letting Caelum replace it with something alive.
Their kiss this time wasn’t quiet. It was fire on fire—desperate, messy, raw. The room trembled. The air pulsed.
But just as her shirt hit the floor—
The alarm bell rang.
A single, sharp peal.
Not a drill. Not an alert.
A death bell.
The Outskirts
Smoke curled through the trees. A Shadow scout limped into the den’s gate, half his face torn open.
“Trap,” he gasped. “The Vale… it was a trap.”
Seraphina’s heart dropped.
“How many did we lose?” she demanded.
He coughed blood. “All. Except me. He was waiting. With her.”
“Her?”
But he was already gone.
Caelum’s face paled. “He couldn’t mean—”
Seraphina’s voice was ice. “He’s raised a mate.”
And not just any.
Her sister.
One Seraphina had killed in her former life.
The dead do not rest long in Darian’s world.
Elsewhere…
Far beyond the Vale, in a place cloaked in shadows and silence, a boy no older than ten stood in front of a mirror.
His eyes shimmered gold.
Behind him, Darian loomed like a specter. “You’re ready.”
The boy didn’t blink. “I’m stronger than she ever was.”
“Good,” Darian said. “Because soon, your mother will come for you.”
The boy’s reflection flickered—until it was no longer his face in the mirror.
It was Seraphina’s.
Crying.
Bleeding.
C
alling his name.
He touched the mirror’s glass.
Then whispered a name no one had taught him:
“Mother.”
- Writer
