Eclipse of the Silent Goddess

Chapter 3

The shrill, mechanical shriek of the alarm sirens cut through the arena like a blade, instantly shattering the suffocating tension between Evangeline and Alpha Garrison.

Red warning runes etched into the obsidian walls began to pulse violently, casting blood-colored shadows across the floor. For a fraction of a second, the students stood frozen, paralyzed by confusion. St. Jude’s was protected by a century-old, high-tier magical barrier. A breach was supposed to be impossible.

"Rogues! They’re in the eastern sector!" a voice screamed from the grand corridor outside. "The barrier is down!"

The silence broke into absolute bedlam. Panic rippled through the lower-tier students, who began scrambling for the exits, trampling over discarded training weapons.

*CRASH.*

Before anyone could reach the doors, the massive, reinforced glass windows lining the upper tier of the amphitheater shattered inward. A rain of lethal glass shards showered the arena, followed immediately by a nightmare made flesh.

Massive, twisted wolves poured through the broken frames. These weren't proud, noble shifters; these were rogues corrupted by dark magic. Their fur was matted and caked with dried blood, their eyes completely bloodshot and devoid of sanity, and a foul, black bile dripped from their snapping jaws. They howled—a discordant, terrifying sound that echoed off the high ceiling—and lunged into the crowd of retreating students.

"Form a defensive perimeter!" Garrison’s voice boomed, completely overriding the chaos. He didn't waste a breath on fear. "Elite track, protect the casualties! Move!"

In a seamless, terrifying display of raw power, Garrison shifted mid-stride. Clothes tore away as his body expanded, his bones snapping and reshaping in the blink of an eye. Where the man had stood, a gargantuan, midnight-black wolf now stood, easily twice the size of any normal Alpha. With a deafening roar that shook the very dust from the rafters, the black wolf threw himself into the fray.

He was a whirlwind of teeth and claws. Garrison caught a rogue by the throat mid-air, crushing its windpipe with a single, brutal snap of his jaws, before spinning to tear his claws through the chest of another.

Evangeline immediately retreated into the shadows of the heavy weapon racks lining the back wall. Her heart hammered against her ribs like a trapped bird. Her high-fae survival instincts screamed at her to use the absolute chaos to slip out through the servant tunnels and vanish into the woods. This was her chance to escape St. Jude's forever.

She turned to run, but a sharp, agonized shriek caught her attention.

Across the arena, Tanya was trapped. The beta wolf had barely recovered from Evangeline's shoulder throw when the attack began. Now, bleeding heavily from a deep claw wound on her leg, she was crawling backward against a stone pillar. Two massive, foaming rogues were closing in on her, their teeth bared, tasting her fear. Tanya's sycophants had already fled, leaving her completely alone.

Evangeline froze. Tanya had been cruel, arrogant, and miserable to her. But she didn't deserve to be torn apart by feral monsters.

*Damn my conscience,* Evangeline thought bitterly.

Abandoning her submissive slouch, she lunged toward the nearest weapon rack. Her fingers wrapped around the hilt of a heavy, silver-tipped training dagger. It wasn't balanced for her fae fighting style, but it would have to do.

Moving like a ghost shifting through the smoke, Evangeline blurred across the distance. She didn't make a sound. She slipped entirely into the blind spot of the first rogue just as it reared back to bite Tanya's throat.

With lethal, terrifying precision, Evangeline drove the silver dagger upward, straight into the soft tissue beneath the beast's jaw, piercing its brain. The rogue stiffened and collapsed into the dirt without even a whimper.

Tanya’s eyes went wide, staring up through the blood and dirt at the "mute freak" who had just saved her life.

Before the second rogue could react to its partner's death, Evangeline spun on her heel. Channeling a fraction of her suppressed fae strength into her leg, she delivered a flawless, devastating kick straight to the beast's snout. The bone shattered with a sickening crunch, and the rogue was sent flying backward, crashing into a stone pillar and slumping into unconsciousness.

"Get up and run," Evangeline wanted to scream, but she forced herself to remain silent, merely gesturing sharply toward the exit. Tanya, completely shell-shocked, scrambled away on all fours.

But the temporary victory evaporated as a deafening, agonizing roar echoed from the center of the arena.

Evangeline snapped her head around. Garrison, in his massive wolf form, had just decapitated the rogue lieutenant, surrounded by a mountain of defeated enemies. But he hadn't seen the shadow lurking in the rafters directly above him.

A rogue assassin, cloaked in a dark, shimmering illusion spell, dropped from the ceiling. In its human-passing hands, it wielded a long, jagged obsidian blade pulsing with a sickly, purple-black light.

*A cursed blade.*

"Garrison, look out!" an elite student screamed, but it was too late.

The assassin drove the blade deep into the black wolf’s flank, twisting the metal before ripping it out. Garrison let out a strangled, agonizing howl. The midnight-black wolf collapsed heavily into the dirt, his transformation violently reversing as his body tried to fight off the foreign invader.

Within seconds, Garrison was back in his human form, gasping for air on his hands and knees. The wound in his side was horrific, smoking with a foul, acidic vapor. Black, pulsing veins were rapidly spreading outward from the injury, crawling up his torso toward his chest.

The curse was heading straight for his heart.

Seeing the legendary Alpha fall, the remaining rogues let out a victorious, bloodthirsty howl. The academy’s remaining defenders began to waver, collapsing under the psychological weight of seeing their invincible commander brought to his knees. The line was breaking, and the monsters were winning.