Blood on the Moonlit Snow
1182 Words
I rose.
Silence locked the gorge in place.
Frigid pine air flooded my lungs. Sharp. Clean. Unchained.
I was alive.
No joy. Only a raw, buzzing clarity thrumming deep in my bones.
I glanced down at my tattered white dress.
Old blood stained the fabric, but the skin beneath was flawless.
Healed. Reborn.
Faint silver luminescence crawled beneath my skin, weaving through my veins. The lunar power dormant in my blood for millennia was awake.
My fingertips brushed the former scar of the soul bond severance.
Smooth. Cold. Unbreakable as marble.
The world shifted before my eyes.
My mortal sight stripped away, replaced by an ancient, layered perception.
Gorge stone bled moss emerald and aged indigo—centuries of sealed energy coiled within.
The frozen lake hummed muted silver, its power trapped under thick, unyielding ice.
Above the cliff face, three burning crimson blazes tore through the shadow.
Malice.
Predator hunger.
They came for the corpse they’d thrown to the abyss.
A hundred feet up, closing fast.
I did not hide.
I did not cower.
I stood anchored in red moonlight, and let them descend.
My heart did not race. It beat slow, cold, terrifyingly composed.
A new consciousness commanded my body—precise, alien, unmerciful.
Snow crunched heavy under the first landing wolf.
Silas. Lysander’s deadliest hound.
Scarred jaw, permanent venomous sneer—an enemy I’d known my whole life.
Two subordinates flanked him, their auras dimmer, yet dripping the same murderous red.
Silas’s sick yellow eyes swept the broken ice, the unblooded snow, then locked onto me.
Standing.
Whole.
Glowing.
His jaw went slack.
Shock stripped the malice from his features for one heartbeat.
He’d come for broken flesh.
He found an awakened goddess.
The shock curdled fast.
Oily purple veins streaked his crimson aura—possessive lust, the hunger to break the unbreakable.
A slimy grin spread across his face.
“Well, well. The gutter-blood has tricks.” He stepped forward, bravado thick as tar. “Residual fall magic. Let’s see how long it holds.”
Empty posturing. I saw right through it.
Flickering jitters in his aura betrayed the confidence he wore as a mask.
He puffed out his chest.
Alpha pressure crashed outward—a weighted, oppressive tide meant to bend knees, force primal submission.
The same force that had chained me for twenty-three years.
It washed over me like warm wind.
I did not flinch. Not a muscle moved.
Silas’s grin faltered.
He pushed harder, his aura flaring, straining at its limits.
I tilted my head, watching him with detached curiosity.
He was kicking at a mountain.
Pointless.
As his power spiked, my lunar sight pierced his aura entirely.
I saw the blueprint of his life force laid bare.
Between his shoulder blades, a dense energy knot pulsed—a nexus. A fatal, hidden weakness.
A plan crystallized, cold and sharp as ice.
I widened my eyes. Staggered one step back, boot skidding on ice.
I breathed in ragged, panicked gasps. I became what they expected: small, broken, terrified prey.
Silas took the bait.
His grin bloomed wider, uglier.
“See? Nothing but cheap tricks.”
He closed the gap in two greedy strides, meaty hand darting to seize my shoulder and drag me back to the throne.
I moved.
This body was no longer weak flesh. It was coiled silver lightning.
I pivoted, letting his grip close on empty air.
In the same fluid motion, my hand shot upward.
Not to strike. To grasp.
Moonlight-tipped fingers slipped through the thin barrier of his aura, locking around his trachea with surgical precision.
A wet, choked gurgle burst from his throat.
His eyes bulged, the purple lust in his aura bleaching to stark, blinding terror.
One subordinate howled, bones already rippling beneath his skin as he began to Shift.
I did not glance his way.
My free hand swept sideways, lazy and dismissive.
I channeled the cold, singing power in my veins and let it slip free.
A thread of solid moonlight sliced the air—thin, razor-sharp frozen mist.
Shhhhhhk.
The shifting wolf screamed, collapsing instantly.
The silver thread severed his ankle tendons clean. Frost smoked over the wounds. He would never hunt again.
The last enforcer froze, his aura flickering sick gray under paralyzing dread.
Silas clawed my wrist, his nails scraping harmlessly across lunar-hardened skin.
Lunar power made me impervious to his mundane strength.
I pulled his face close, my lips brushing his ear over his ragged, desperate gasps.
“Did you think this was the end?” I breathed, voice colder than the gorge frost.
He whimpered, begging silently.
“This is the first page. A long, bloody story starts now. Every line will be written in the blood of those who knelt to a false king.”
I could have unravelled his spinal nexus. Left him paralyzed, broken, alive.
That mercy was not his to claim.
My grip tightened.
A damp, final crunch echoed—not bone, but the total collapse of his life core.
The light extinguished in his eyes. His crimson aura flickered, dissolved, vanished into the bitter wind.
I dropped him.
He crumpled into the snow—garbage, discarded.
The last wolf whimpered, scrambled backward, and fled into shadow, abandoning his crippled packmate.
I stared at my palms.
No blood. No stain.
I felt no remorse, no guilt.
Only quiet balance. A small, overdue debt settled.
High on the gorge rim, hidden within ancient pine shadow, Kael watched.
His orders were simple: verify the exile’s death, report to the Wolf King.
He had come to witness a corpse.
He witnessed divinity unchained.
He’d seen me fall. He’d watched the red moon split the clouds. He’d observed my impossible healing and brutal, effortless victory.
Silas, a hardened B-Class enforcer, had been erased without resistance.
This was no fleeting magic.
This was a weapon—forged by the throne’s own cruelty, now turned against it.
Kael had long known the pack hierarchy rotted from within. He served Lysander behind a flawless loyal mask, hiding quiet, festering contempt.
Now he saw the storm rising.
A sharp, dangerous smile tugged at his lips, cracking the cold composure of the royal soldier.
He watched my lunar glow dim as I turned toward the forest beyond the frozen lake.
I moved not like a fugitive, but a predator marking new territory.
Once the trees swallowed my silhouette, Kael descended soundlessly.
He did not follow. Not yet.
Gloved hands erased boot prints and scuffle marks with meticulous precision, wiping all proof I had survived.
Only Silas’s dark blood stained the snow—a truth he chose to bury for the throne.
He stood, gazing into the dark woodland where I vanished.
“The moon just got a new queen,” he breathed into the freezing mist.
A prophecy. A secret. The spark of a coming war.
Kael faded back into the darkness, leaving the gorge to its new, silent ruler.
Save & Follow to unlock Kael’s traitorous plan and watch Elara turn lunar power into a brutal reckoning for the wolf throne. The hunt has begun.
- Writer
