SCARLETT
Light burned behind my eyelids, seeped into my skin, filled every breath until I thought I would shatter into it. For a heartbeat maybe a century there was no Kael, no Darius, no Lucien. Only the pulse of a power older than moons.
A voice followed, soft yet thunderous.
Moonbane.
You are the hinge of worlds.
I felt the Echo’s presence wrap around me like fog. A thousand images flashed: rivers of molten starlight, forests of black glass, wolves of pure shadow howling across a newborn sky.
My chest tightened. “I won’t let you destroy them,” I whispered.
I am not destruction, the voice said. I am return. The hunt before creation. Without me, the cycle rots. With you, it can breathe.
The pull was intoxicating warm and endless, like falling into a sea that promised no pain, no f
