Chapter2
1376 Words
Blood on the Glass
Celine
She had never heard bones break like that.
Not in movies. Not in the ER waiting rooms she cleaned on night shifts. Not even in the alley, when Kael first turned.
This was different. Raw. Savage. Final.
The thing that had come through the window wasn't a wolf. Not like Kael. It was… wrong. Skin stretched too tight, black veins pulsing beneath. Fangs that didn’t fit its jaw. Eyes that burned red but not with fire—with hunger.
Kael tackled it before it reached her. They crashed into the dining table, shattering glass and polished oak. Celine ducked behind the kitchen island, her fingers slick with sweat and blood she couldn’t tell was hers.
The fight was vicious. No choreography. No rules. Just teeth and fury.
Kael’s body changed as he moved. Bones sliding, fur rising in patches, a half-shift that made him more beast than man. His claws tore into the thing’s throat, but it didn’t fall. It laughed. A wet, guttural sound that made her gag.
And then it turned on her.
She saw it coming—felt it, actually, like static under her skin. The same way she’d felt Kael in the alley. Time stretched. Her breath froze.
And her vision changed.
Not like a dream. Not like memory.
She saw it.
The creature lunging. Kael too far. Her own death, a scream caught in her throat.
But she also saw another version. A heartbeat different. A shift in weight. A glint of metal on the counter. She reached for it without thinking.
The cast iron skillet hit the creature square in the temple.
It shrieked.
Kael surged up behind it and sank his teeth into its spine.
It collapsed in a heap of twitching limbs and smoke.
Celine dropped the skillet. Her hands were shaking.
Kael stood panting over the body, covered in blood that wasn’t all his. “That,” he growled, “was a Shadowborn.”
She leaned on the counter, breath ragged. “That was a what?”
Kael wiped his mouth, eyes still glowing faintly. “Lucien’s little experiment. He’s been trying to make monsters that don’t need the moon.”
She laughed—because there was nothing else to do. “Great. So you’re a werewolf. Your brother’s making mutant murder pets. And I’m apparently a psychic with a frying pan.”
Kael turned to her, serious now. “You saw something, didn’t you?”
She nodded slowly. “It was like déjà vu, but louder. I knew where it would go. What I needed. Like… a fork in time.”
His jaw tightened. “Then it’s starting.”
“What is?”
Kael met her eyes. “Your inheritance.”
Kael
He watched her shake.
Not from fear—at least not the normal kind. Not anymore.
It was awakening.
He could smell it on her: the bloom of old magic, buried so deep the world forgot it existed. The Seer line had always been unique. Not witches. Not oracles. Something else. Time and blood woven together.
He remembered his mother’s stories. One Seer for each age. When they fall, the balance crumbles.
But this wasn’t just balance. This was war.
“Lucien’s hunting you now,” Kael said quietly. “He won’t stop.”
“Yeah, I got that part,” she snapped. “Monster through the window kind of tipped me off.”
He almost smiled.
But then he looked at the body.
Already the skin was decaying, blackening into ash. That meant it had no soul left. Lucien had burned it out to forge the creature. That wasn’t science or magic. That was desecration.
“We have to move again,” he said. “He knows this location. We’ll go to the underground.”
Celine hesitated. “Underground?”
“A place beneath the city,” he said. “Safe. Ward-protected. Old blood knows the way.”
She frowned. “You talk like a prophecy and a crime novel had a baby.”
He looked at her—really looked.
Wet hair clinging to her cheeks. Blood smudges on her temple. Eyes too steady for someone who just faced death. She’s strong, the wolf whispered. She’s ours.
He shook the thought away.
“We need to go,” he said. “Now.”
Lucien
The corpse arrived in pieces.
Lucien Vale watched his creation spill across the marble floor, steaming and broken. It had taken three packs of handlers to drag what was left of the Shadowborn back from the apartment tower.
He knelt beside it, fingers tracing the cooling bones.
“She hit it with a frying pan?” he asked.
Damaris, his lieutenant, shifted uncomfortably. “That’s what the watchers reported. She... saw it coming.”
Lucien grinned.
“Well then. I suppose the blood didn’t lie.”
He stood, dusting ash from his sleeves. His suit was immaculate. His voice was soft. But his aura—the space around him—seemed to thrum with darkness.
“So,” he said, turning to his inner circle. “The last Seer has awakened. And baby brother got to her first.”
A few chuckled nervously. He didn’t.
“I want her alive,” Lucien said. “But bleeding. Broken. Let her see what ‘protection’ from Kael gets her.”
Damaris bowed. “Shall I send the Reavers?”
Lucien’s smile was shark-sharp. “Send everyone.”
Celine
The underground smelled like magic.
Not incense and herbs. Not sparkles and moonlight. No. This was different.
Old stone. Burned metal. Iron and ink and blood.
Celine stood just inside the threshold of a vaulted chamber beneath what used to be a cathedral. Now it looked more like a bunker-meets-catacomb, with glowing runes carved into the arches and sigils pulsing faintly on the floor.
Kael led her in. His people—if that’s what they were—watched her. Some with curiosity. Some with fear.
One woman stepped forward, tall and pale, draped in charcoal velvet. Her eyes were stitched shut.
“Seer,” she said, voice echoing like bells.
Celine swallowed. “Yeah, that’s what they keep calling me.”
The woman tilted her head. “And do you see?”
“I see too much,” Celine muttered.
Kael gave her a nod of encouragement. “This is Nyra. She keeps the wardlines intact.”
Celine stared. “How does she see?”
“She doesn’t,” Nyra said. “But the threads speak.”
Okay. Creepy. Fascinating. Terrifying.
Nyra reached out and took Celine’s hand before she could object. Her skin was cold. “You’re cracked open. Time spills from you. Untamed.”
“I didn’t ask for this,” Celine whispered.
“No one ever does,” Nyra replied. “But fate does not barter.”
The vision hit her like a punch to the skull.
Fire. Glass. Kael on his knees. Lucien grinning.
A crown made of bones.
Celine gasped and yanked her hand away.
Nyra’s sewn eyes widened beneath the thread. “It’s begun.”
Kael
He caught her before she fell.
The vision had drained her—more than the first. That was how it started, he remembered. Flickers. Then floods.
Nyra backed away, chanting quietly to the wards.
“She saw something,” he said.
“She saw everything,” Nyra replied.
Kael carried Celine to the inner sanctum, laying her on the stone bed draped with furs. Her breath was shallow, but steady.
He sat beside her.
“Why me?” she’d asked once already.
He had no answer. Only a gut-deep certainty that she mattered more than prophecy, more than power, more than anything he’d fought for.
“Because you are the veil,” he murmured.
And when the veil breaks, the monsters don’t just crawl through.
They rule.
Celine
She woke to the sound of breathing.
Not hers.
Heavy. Close. Too close.
She opened her eyes.
Lucien was sitting beside the bed.
Smiling.
Kael’s unconscious body lay sprawled in the corner, blood pooling beneath him.
Celine opened her mouth to scream—
Lucien leaned in. “Shhh, little Seer.”
His breath was cold.
“You’re going to show me the end of the world.”
- Writer
