Blood and Runes
483 Words
The silence Damaris left behind was deafening.
Aria stepped into her chamber, boots crunching over scorched stone and blackened symbols. The walls were charred. Runes shattered. Smoke curled from spell-burned air.
But what chilled her wasn’t the destruction.
It was the emptiness.
The fake pendant still hung cold against her chest—but she felt it now. A hollow ache in her core.
The real pendant was gone.
The gate was awakening.
And the enemy had her key.
Kael stood beside her, rage like heat in the air. “His name is Damaris. Once a scholar of the Eastern Order.”
She turned, eyes narrowing. “You knew him?”
His jaw clenched. “He was my brother.”
---
The council gathered before dawn.
Wolves. Warriors. Seers. Elders wrapped in threadbare cloaks and old fear.
“He’s breached the outer defenses!”
“We must move her to the Sacred Keep!”
“She’s not a girl—she’s a weapon!”
Aria slammed her fist onto the war table.
“I am right here.”
Silence fell.
“I’m not your heir to protect. I’m not your weapon to wield. I am Aria Moonstone—and I will choose what happens next.”
Kael’s voice was steady. “Then choose quickly. Damaris has the pendant. He’s heading for the first seal.”
“What happens if he breaks it?” she asked.
Lena’s face was pale. “The gods return.”
Aria blinked. “You mean Alphas. Ancients.”
“No,” Lena said softly. “I mean gods. The kind who broke continents. The kind your ancestors locked away.”
Aria’s blood ran cold.
---
That night, she found Kael alone.
Deep beneath the fortress, in the Moonstone Vault—where relics whispered of blood and duty—Kael held a dagger etched in star-runes.
“This was your mother’s,” he said.
Aria took it, breath catching. The blade was warm. Alive.
“She died at the second seal,” Kael added. “She fought to protect it. So did your father.”
“I never knew them,” she whispered.
Kael turned to her. “Your father once saved me. Pulled me from fire. Told me mercy was stronger than fear.”
She looked up. “You hated him.”
“No,” he said. “I envied him.”
A pause.
“You’re not like any Alpha I’ve ever known, Aria. You’re more. That terrifies them.”
He looked down.
“And sometimes, it terrifies me.”
---
Beyond the Black Valley…
Damaris stood on a blood-soaked altar.
The pendant hovered above his palm, spinning slowly. Runes carved into the stone pulsed with black light. The Gate of Endings loomed behind him—its twin doors sealed for a thousand years.
Until now.
One by one…
The runes began to glow.
The first seal…
was breaking.
---
- Writer
