Bound By Rejection

17 - The Final Ascent

The climb through the narrow, rusted ventilation shaft was an ordeal that tested the last vestiges of Lyra’s strength, demanding payment for every breath of freedom she craved. The metal ductwork was a labyrinth of misery: burning hot in some stretches from proximity to the mountain’s furnace flues, and ice-cold in others, where damp, mossy air condensed. She dragged her body upward, every inch an act of conscious will.

The heavy silver cuffs, still clamped to her wrists, were the cruelest obstacle. They scraped against the curved metal walls with a constant, jarring shhh-shhh-shhh, the sound a relentless, grinding reminder of her captivity and the Alpha who had put them there. Her raw, blistered skin stuck to the metal, then peeled away, leaving thin, stinging trails of blood and sweat. Her muscles screamed, unused to such exertion after weeks of being shackled and starved. She had to fight the phantom weight of the wolfsbane haze that still clung to the edges of her mind, threatening to drag her back into the abyss of exhaustion.

Caz was a ghost in the dark ahead of her, moving with a fluid, efficient silence that spoke of years spent surviving where others perished. He was her anchor, his voice a low, encouraging rumble—and occasionally, a sharp command—whenever her resolve faltered.

"Keep your knees tight," he hissed from above. "Use the seam. They won't hear us over the collapse down below, but don't give them a reason to listen."

Lyra bit back a retort, focusing on the pain. She channeled it. The fire in her shoulder—the Goddess Mark—no longer felt like a wound, but a pressurized valve, holding back a volatile storm. She needed to escape, not explode.

Finally, after what felt like an eternity of desperate, clawing ascent, they reached the end. Caz pushed upward against a final obstruction, and a gust of blessedly fresh, cold air swept into the shaft, carrying the scent of pine, wet rock, and distance.

"We're here," Caz whispered, relief cutting through his usual composure.

They pressed their faces against the opening—a large, circular, exterior grate. It was wide enough for a person to squeeze through, providing a terrifying view of the black abyss below. Beneath them stretched the North Woods, an endless, dark ocean of trees under a moonless sky. The vast, dark expanse of freedom.

"The bolts are rusted," Caz immediately assessed, his fingers already working a sliver of silver wire through the mesh. "Too old for a brute-force approach. I can pick the screw heads, but it will take time. They're old Imperial bolts, meant to withstand siege, not rust."

Lyra’s breath hitched, not from exertion, but from the sight of the world. The moon is not out. It was the perfect cloak. They were high up the sheer cliff face of the mountain, in the quietest sector. Kael had commanded his trackers to focus on the collapse, and Caz had guided them to this blind spot. It was agonizingly close.

Caz worked with meticulous, nerve-wracking slowness. The wire scraped against the metal, a faint, metallic whine that sounded deafening in the sudden stillness.

Click. The first screw head was compromised.

Just as the second screw whined loose, they froze.

Footsteps.

Heavy, measured, and dangerously close. Not distant chaos, but an organized patrol. They were ascending the narrow, high-altitude exterior path that ran just below the vent.

"Guard patrol," Caz hissed, pressing his body flat against the damp metal. His single silver eye narrowed, reflecting the faint, distant light of the fortress. "They’re checking the high perimeter. They're not looking for us; they're looking for our corpse."

They listened, their hearts hammering against the metal like terrified birds. The voices below were muffled by the thickness of the stone, but fear sharpened Lyra’s hearing.

"Nothing, sir," a nervous voice reported from below. "Alpha Kael ordered all units to focus on the main hall and the lower tunnels. He said no one could survive up here."

The reply was a harsh, older growl. "Kael is panicking. He’s too obsessed with his damn bond to see the bigger threat. Elder Maren specifically ordered us to check the north vents. She believes the traitor might have tried to climb out. She wants definitive confirmation."

Elder-aligned.

Lyra’s blood ran cold, immediately hardening into ice. These were not Kael’s reluctant patrol; these were the executioners. Maren was the wolf who had held the branding iron. They wouldn't capture her; they would kill her and claim she fell. Her death is a political necessity now.

"She wants a body," Lyra whispered, her voice tight with suppressed fury.

"We give them chaos," Caz muttered, his fingers working feverishly on the final bolt. "It's loose. We jump on three. You take the rope first."

Lyra shook her head, a slow, deliberate motion. No. She wasn't leaving her life to a three-second window, a rope swing, and the chance that a panicked guard might still get a shot off. She had been passive prey for too long.

"We don't run from them," she said, her voice now steady and imbued with a terrifying, new finality. "We ensure they can't follow."

She closed her eyes, silencing the noise of the mountain, silencing Caz, silencing her own doubt. She reached inward, past the silver, past the pain, straight to the blinding power the Moon Goddess had gifted her. The Goddess Mark on her shoulder flared to life, not with a gentle glow, but with a sudden, localized eruption of energy.

She felt the white-hot power coalesce in her palm—a destructive, targeted heat that eclipsed the protective fire she had used moments earlier. She didn't have time for a careful, elegant strike. She didn't have time for mercy.

She aimed the fire, not at the guard's bodies, but at the structural integrity of the stone ledge directly beneath them—the narrowest part of the mountain path that gave way to a sheer, two-hundred-foot drop.

Burn the earth from beneath them.

The resulting explosion was a compressed, localized burst of pure, white-hot heat and raw sound. It was not the boom of gunpowder, but the silent shriek of stone fibers tearing apart. The ledge didn't just collapse; it vaporized. The heat was so intense, the rock melted instantly, leaving behind a smoking, glass-like fissure and the chilling smell of superheated granite.

The air was filled with a terrifying, strangled cry of surprise and the immediate, sickening sound of falling bodies.

"GO! NOW!" Caz roared, kicking the now-loose grate with savage force. The explosion's residual shockwave sent the vent reeling back into the shaft.

Lyra launched herself out of the opening and into the void, clutching the rope Caz had instantly secured to the vent framework. As she swung against the cliff face, she saw the second guard—injured, stunned, but half-shifted, his eyes rolling back in a desperate animalistic snarl. He had scrambled back to the edge of the newly created precipice, his hand raising a smoking handgun aimed directly at her.

Lyra didn't hesitate. Her survival instinct, now fused with the divine fire, was absolute. She released the final, devastating torrent of her power. It was not a blast; it was a wave of pure, concentrated energy that struck the guard in the chest like an invisible, catastrophic hammer.

He didn't fall from the impact. He simply went silent.

The man collapsed backward into the abyss, his eyes wide and vacant, his essence utterly emptied by the force. His wolf, his spirit, his life—it was all gone, devoured by the sheer magnitude of the divine fire Lyra had unleashed. It was a clean erasure.

Lyra hung there, suspended in the night air, the silver cuffs digging into her raw skin. The smell of ozone and the chilling scent of an annihilated spirit filled her nostrils. She watched the dark mountain cliff, silent once more.

She felt no guilt. No horror. Only a savage, cold sense of finality.

She had just killed for the first time—and it felt like victory.

She took a deep, shaky breath, her body vibrating with the sheer force she had just wielded. Her voice, rough with dust and adrenaline, was a whisper directed at the silent, oppressive mountain that had been her cage.

"I told you," she whispered. "I'm not coming back."

Caz was already sliding down the rope, signaling for her to follow. The hunt was now officially on. Lyra had traded her chains for a path of scorched earth. She was a fugitive, a murderer, and a weapon of divine reckoning.