Chapter Twenty-Three
The Temple of Ash
The journey to the Temple of Ash was treacherous.
Lyra and Kael rode at dawn, leaving the Hollow behind them with a silence too heavy to name. The trail wound through the Blackroot Mountains, a region long abandoned by any sane traveler. The sky above was grayer here, as though the clouds themselves mourned what lay ahead. And the deeper they traveled, the more Lyra could feel it—an ancient pulse beneath the earth, tugging at the brand on her stomach like a thread unraveling her soul.
“This place smells wrong,” Kael muttered, his hand never straying far from the hilt of his blade.
“It’s older than any place we’ve ever known,” Lyra replied. “Older than the packs. Older than the Blood Wars. They say it was carved from the bones of the first alpha t
