The test of fire
1341 Words
Back at the Highfang stronghold, the Council had gathered.
Darius sat among them — not as Alpha, but as the accused. His silence had become his judgment. He had chosen wrong. Twice.
Lyra stood near the back, draped in a healer’s robe, her face pale, her aura dim. She could barely stand.
But when the vote began, she lifted her head.
“I invoke Blood Oath,” she croaked.
Gasps.
Riven stood. “You have no right—”
“I do,” she said. “I lied. I stole the scent. And I’d do it again. But you can’t blame Averie for surviving what I did. You can’t break her for being stronger than me.”
She crumpled before she finished the sentence.
The vote was paused.
Confusion swirled.
And that was when the stone beneath the hall began to hum.
---
In the depths of the Dreadfen, the creature was no longer sleeping.
It slithered through roots and bone, sensing the imbalance growing, the divine bond burning.
It didn’t want Averie dead.
It wanted to consume what made her rare.
Her scent.
Her truth.
Her choice.
And the longer her bond remained intact, the stronger it grew.
The old seers had a name for it, whispered in curses and carved into forbidden stone:
The Scent-Eater.
And it was almost upon them.
-------
Back in the Flame Cavern, Averie stood before the Lunar Flame.
“Prove your bond,” the woman said. “Not by words. By spirit.”
She opened the scroll. It turned to ash. The wind screamed.
And the fire leapt around them in a circle — searing hot, blistering.
Kaelen stepped in first.
Then Averie.
The flame licked at their skin but didn’t burn. It recognized them. Not because they were fated…
But because they had chosen each other despite not being.
That was stronger than fate.
The Lunar Flame stepped forward. “Then I name you true. And I bless your bond with fire and moon.”
A silver crescent appeared between Averie’s collarbones. A burn — but beautiful. Eternal.
The mark of the Moon-Blessed.
---
At that moment, far away in the Council chamber, the Moonstone shattered.
The vote never came.
Because fate had already decided.
But so had something else.
In the forest beyond the gates…
The Scent-Eater rose.
And it had smelled her, it wanted her and was coming for her
The Scent-Eater (POV)
They named me wrong.
Not beast.
Not curse.
Not shadow.
I am what remains when fate is broken.
I was born when the first bond shattered — when a wolf turned away from their destined mate and chose power instead. That rupture birthed me. Gave me hunger. Made me crave the divine thread that binds wolf to wolf. She made me, so she has no right to despise me, I was not made by my own will, but by her disobedience, her own sin.
And now…
She burns.
She who was silenced.
She who was stolen from.
She who made a bond without fate’s blessing.
Her scent calls to me. It is fire and defiance.
It will not last.
I move now, faster than thought, deeper than bone. I slither through root and ruin, driven by the thread in the wind.
She remade herself.
But I will unmake her.
---
It started with a tremor in his jaw.
Then his spine.
Then his soul.
Kaelen froze mid-step as they crossed the mountain path back toward Highfang. Averie turned, catching the sharp flicker in his gaze.
“What is it?” she asked, breathless.
He didn’t answer at first. His hand gripped the hilt of his blade, fingers twitching. The sky was too quiet. The forest too still.
Like the world was holding its breath.
Then came the whisper — not in his ears, but in his instincts:
She is being hunted.
Not by man.
Not by wolf.
By something older.
Something wrong.
“I felt it,” he murmured. “Something’s coming.”
Averie didn’t hesitate. “From the Council?”
“No,” he said. “Something worse.”
His eyes darkened — the amber flash of his wolf bleeding through.
“Something that wants what we’ve made.”
---
Back at Highfang, the Moonstone had exploded. The Council was in chaos. Elders were shouting warnings, casting protective circles. The guards smelled the shift before anyone else — a scent in the wind like rotting flowers and burned earth.
Darius stood alone, staring at the forest beyond the walls.
“Averie…” he whispered.
In the forest, the trees bent toward the path. Animals fled. The clouds swallowed the moon.
Kaelen grabbed Averie’s wrist.
“We need to run—”
“No,” she said, voice clear. “We go to them.”
“To the Council?”
“To warn them,” she said. “If we don’t stand together now, this thing will tear us all apart.”
Kaelen hesitated.
But then the wind howled — not just through the air, but through their bond — shaking it like a string pulled tight.
Averie’s eyes widened.
“Kaelen…”
She saw it.
Just for a second.
A face in the shadows behind her closed eyelids.
No eyes. No scent of its own. Only hunger.
---
The Scent Eater ( POV )
They run toward me.
Good.
Let them come. Let them believe they are strong. Let them think love is enough.
I will peel the scent from her soul.
I will unweave the bond.
I will feast on what they dared create without permission.
She is marked by the Moon.
I am the silence between stars.
Let the war begin.
---
The sky tore open at midnight.
The first thing they heard was the wind — howling, unnatural. Then came the scent: burnt honey and rot. Then the trees fell.
The Scent-Eater breached the wards like smoke through silk, curling over the walls of Highfang as if they were nothing.
Panic erupted.
Wolves shifted mid-run. Warriors scrambled. The Council raised every shield they knew.
And in the center of the courtyard stood Lyra — broken, trembling — but the first to whisper:
“It’s not here to destroy us. It’s here for her.”
Averie and Kaelen arrived just as the outer guards collapsed in fear — not dead, not injured, but drained, their bonds flickering like dying flames.
Kaelen stepped in front of Averie.
But the creature didn’t strike.
It stood in shadow — tall, cloaked in smoke and bone, with no face… only the vague shimmer of mouths that were not mouths.
And then — it spoke.
---
“You were not chosen.”
The voice was in every head at once, felt in bones and teeth and soul.
“You severed destiny. You created a bond the gods did not ordain. And now the weight of that bond has awakened me.”
Averie stepped forward, defiant.
“You mean to unmake it?”
“No,” the Scent-Eater whispered. “I offer you a choice.”
Gasps echoed through the courtyard.
Even the Council fell still.
“I am not a beast of death. I am balance. You upset the thread of fate. So I will offer mercy... if you agree to unravel your bond.”
Kaelen’s growl was low, primal. “Never.”
“If you do,” the creature said, “I will retreat beneath the roots of the world. Your people will live. Your line will be spared. But if you keep what is not yours—”
His shadow surged.
“—then I will take everything.”
---
Kaelen turned to Averie.
“We end it, he wins,” he said. “He wants you powerless. Alone.”
Averie looked at the Council.
At Darius.
At Lyra, weeping behind them.
Then back at Kaelen.
“We didn’t steal fate,” she whispered. “We rewrote it.”
She turned to the creature.
“No.”
Silence fell like snowfall.
Then—
“So be it.”
- Writer
