Chapter nineteen
724 Words
The sky split open.
From the ramparts of the fortress, we watched the storm roll down the mountain like an avalanche. Black clouds churned with lightning that cracked purple and white, striking the earth in rhythmic bursts—like a war drum announcing its arrival.
Kael stood beside me, his armor dark as obsidian, wolf just beneath his skin. “They’re here.”
Not just any army.
The Council’s first wave.
And leading it… was someone Kael never thought he’d see again.
“Who is that?” I asked, squinting into the smoke.
He didn’t answer.
“Kael?”
His lips parted in a whisper.
“…My brother.”
We stood at the gates as the army came into view. Hundreds of warriors, cloaked in shadow and blood. And at the front, mounted on a jet-black wolf with red eyes, was Lucian—Kael’s older brother. Long believed dead. Long buried by both war and betrayal.
His armor bore the Council’s mark.
Kael’s hands trembled. “He died. I saw his body.”
“No,” I whispered. “You saw what they wanted you to see.”
Lucian dismounted, walking straight toward the barrier, stopping just before the wards lit up.
“You’ve grown soft, little brother,” he called out, voice smooth and sharp like broken glass. “I remember when you used to be a killer.”
Kael’s voice dropped. “What have they done to you?”
Lucian smirked. “They showed me the truth. You abandoned our bloodline for a girl who should’ve been put down at birth.”
My wolf snarled. “Say that again.”
Lucian tilted his head. “You’re the forbidden mate, aren’t you? The halfbreed mistake.”
My body filled with flame. “And you’re the walking corpse who doesn’t know who he’s fighting.”
Lightning cracked the sky again.
Lucian raised a single finger.
And the first arrow flew.
The battle at the gates was short—but brutal.
The Council was testing us. Probing our defenses.
Kael fought like a man possessed. Every blow he struck was aimed at the shadow of his brother. I could feel his grief, his rage, the way the bond between us rippled with pain and memories. This war wasn’t just about power anymore.
It was personal.
We forced them back. But they didn’t retreat.
They just… vanished.
Like smoke.
Afterward, I went to the Moonstone.
The first trial had begun.
Alone, I stood in the chamber beneath the temple—the stone pulsed brighter now, reacting to the war brewing around us.
A voice echoed in the chamber.
Power is not given. It is proven.
The ground beneath my feet cracked, and suddenly I was no longer in the fortress.
I stood in a forest I hadn’t seen in years.
The orphanage.
A child version of me sat in the clearing, blood on her knees, tears on her cheeks.
“You don’t belong here,” the echoes whispered.
“You are nothing.”
“Even your parents didn’t want you.”
I staggered forward. “No.”
Face the memory that breaks you, the Moonstone commanded. Or be broken by it.
I dropped to my knees.
And I screamed.
Every hurt. Every rejection. Every time they told me I wasn’t enough—I felt it again.
But then I heard another voice.
Kael’s.
“You were never nothing to me.”
I stood.
The illusions shattered like glass.
And in their place stood me—older, stronger, burning with silver flame.
Trial One: Conquer Your Past.
Passed.
But the cost was steep.
When I woke, Kael was by my side, his eyes hollow.
“I felt it,” he said. “You were gone for hours.”
“It felt like minutes,” I whispered.
He reached for my hand. “How many more trials?”
“Two,” I said.
And the second one?
Was already waiting.
At dawn, a raven landed on our war table. Its eyes glowed white. A message.
A voice echoed through the room:
“Return the Moonstone by sunset. Or we come for her heart.”
The message was signed with a name we hadn’t heard in centuries.
The Shadow Queen.
Kael turned to me. “She’s real?”
I nodded.
And whispered, “And she wants me dead.”
- Writer
