Rejected now unstoppable

chapter 5

The howl faded into the wind, leaving only silence and the steady drip of water from the cavern ceiling. The three children sat on the cold basalt floor around the altar, backs pressed against ancient stone, knees drawn close. No one spoke for a long time. The runes on the walls had dimmed to a faint silver glow, pulsing slow and rhythmic, as if the place itself were breathing. Listening.

Mira broke the quiet first. Her voice was small, almost swallowed by the cavern's vastness. "They won't stop. Ronan won't stop."

Luka stared at the floor where his blood had dried in a dark smear across the stone. "He never liked me. Even before the first shift, before I killed anyone. Said I smelled wrong. Said my mother chose wrong when she mated outside the pack."

Cassian traced the crescent mark on his wrist with one pale fingertip, following the curve of the moon, the sharp line of the thorn. "They're not afraid of who we are. They're afraid of what we are."

Mira looked up, green eyes catching the faint runelight. "The Keeper said we're either unstoppable or the end of everything." Her voice dropped to barely a whisper. "Which one are we?"

No one answered. They didn't have to. The question hung between them like smoke from a dying fire, heavy and impossible to wave away.

Dawn came gray and reluctant, seeping into the quarry like dirty water. They moved carefully—scouting the rim in turns, checking for new scents, new tracks, new signs of watchers. Nothing. The hunters had pulled back completely, regrouping somewhere beyond the ridge. That worried them more than an immediate attack would have. Patience meant planning. Planning meant numbers. Numbers meant they were taking the marked children seriously now.

They returned to the carved cavern as the sun climbed higher. The Keeper had not reappeared, but the place felt different now—less empty, more watchful. Eyes in the dark that weren't quite there.

Mira knelt before the altar and placed her palms flat on the stone again, more confident this time. When the runes answered, she did not flinch. Green light traced the spirals carved into rock, then silver, then crimson. The three colors met at the center of the altar and held, swirling together but never quite mixing.

"Show me," she whispered to the stone. "Show me what you remember."

The altar warmed under her hands—not unpleasant, like sun-heated rock. Images flickered across its surface like reflections in disturbed water, rippling and reforming. Not visions of the future this time, but memories. Ancient memories carved into the earth's bones long before the quarry existed, before humans came to these mountains at all.

They saw the First War.

Wolves the size of horses tearing at vampire throats under a sky lit by three moons that bled their colors across the clouds. Witches hurling fire that scorched the earth to black glass, their voices joined in chants that made the air itself scream. Vampires draining entire covens dry in single nights, leaving forests full of withered husks that crumbled to dust at a touch. Chaos. Blood. Bodies piled so high they blocked out the stars. The sky itself seemed torn, ragged at the edges, as if reality were coming apart.

Then peace—sudden and fragile as new ice.

Three figures stood on this very spot, in this very chamber before it had been buried by time. The First Elders, though they looked nothing like the stern Council members who ruled now. They were young. Desperate. Exhausted. They cut their wrists with obsidian blades, letting blood drip onto the altar—black blood that hissed when it touched stone. The Covenant was born in this chamber, in blood and necessity. The runes ignited for the first time, burning so bright the Elders had to look away, sealing the oath into rock that would outlast empires.

The images shifted forward, blurring through centuries like pages flipping in a book.

The Council meeting in the Hollow Spire, much later. Elders arguing in low, urgent voices around a table made of bone. A scroll unrolled, edges yellow with age: the prophecy of the Triad. Three children marked by the Triune Eclipse. Destined to renew the Covenant with power that could never break... or shatter it completely and drown the world in blood.

The Elders debated for what looked like days. Some wanted to find the prophesied children when they were born, raise them under guard, shape them into protectors. Others wanted them killed in their cradles before they could grow strong enough to be a threat. In the end, they chose neither path. They chose to watch from a distance. To wait. To hope the prophecy was wrong, or that it wouldn't come to pass in their lifetimes.

The last image: Elder Thorne, younger then, perhaps only a century old, staring at the scroll with haunted eyes that had seen too much war. He rolled it up with careful hands, sealed it with black wax stamped with the triple moon, and hid it deep in the Spire's foundations where no one would think to look.

The vision ended. The runes faded back to their faint glow.

Mira pulled her hands away, breathing hard, heart hammering against her ribs. "They knew. All of them. They knew we were coming."

Luka's growl was low and dangerous, more wolf than boy. "And they let us be hunted anyway. Let us suffer. Let us think we were curses."

Cassian's eyes were distant, staring at something none of them could see. "They're afraid of change. Even good change. Even necessary change."

Mira stood, legs shaky but voice steady. "Then we stop being children they can ignore."

They trained differently after that day.

No more games of hide-and-seek with scents and shadows. No more gentle illusions meant to confuse rather than harm. They pushed each other to the edge of breaking and then past it.

Luka taught them to fight in full wolf form—how to use weight and momentum to bring down larger opponents, how to protect the throat while exposing an enemy's, how to turn a wild charge into a controlled takedown. Mira worked on weaving her magic directly into their movements: green threads that bound limbs and choked breath, silver light that sharpened claws to razors, crimson pulses that sped heartbeats and reflexes until time seemed to slow around them.

Cassian drilled them in the dark—blindfolded sparring in the deepest tunnels, learning to fight by sound and scent and the faint vibration of heartbeats alone. Teaching them that eyes could lie but instinct rarely did.

They bled. They bruised. They broke small bones that healed crooked and had to be re-broken. And they healed faster each time, as if their bodies were learning from the pain.

One evening, as the sun bled red across the quarry rim like a wound in the sky, Cassian found something in the deepest tunnel branch—the one they had been avoiding, the one that dropped into darkness with no visible bottom.

A narrow fissure in the wall, barely wide enough for a child to squeeze through sideways. He pushed into it, stone scraping his shoulders, and emerged into a small alcove no bigger than a closet. The air was different here—older, tinged with something metallic and sacred.

Inside, arranged carefully on a natural shelf of rock: three small bundles wrapped in oilcloth that had somehow remained intact through decades, maybe centuries.

He carried them back to the main cavern without a word, expression unreadable.

When he unwrapped them on the floor between them, the children stared in silence.

A dagger of black obsidian, its edge honed to nothing, sharp enough to split light. The handle was carved with a crescent moon so detailed you could see the craters. A thin silver chain with a pendant shaped like a thorned rose, each petal inlaid with chips of emerald that caught the runelight and held it. A small vial of dark liquid stoppered with cork and sealed with red wax, labeled in faded script that looked almost like their mark: Triune Blood.

Mira reached out slowly and touched the dagger. It hummed under her fingers—a vibration she felt in her bones, in her teeth. "These were left for us. Someone knew we'd be here."

Luka lifted the chain carefully, as if it might break. The pendant warmed against his palm, pulse matching his own heartbeat. "The Keeper?"

Cassian uncorked the vial with careful fingers. A single drop of black blood welled at the rim—the exact same color as the mark on their wrists, as the blood in the vision of the First Elders. He recorked it quickly, suddenly afraid of what it might do if spilled. "Not just the Keeper. Someone who believed the prophecy. Who wanted us to survive."

They did not speak of using the items yet. They simply kept them close, tucked into pockets and wrapped around necks, ready.

That night, the attack came without warning.

Not wolves this time.

Shadows moved at the quarry rim—too fluid for anything living, too silent for anything natural. Vampires. Three of them, cloaked in night itself, eyes glowing crimson in the dark like distant stars. They had come from the south, slipping past Ronan's pack hunters, drawn by rumors of a "defective" child who refused to feed properly and the strange power that had begun to gather around him like static before a storm.

They descended the eastern wall like spiders, claws digging into stone that should have been too smooth to grip, moving in absolute silence.

Cassian felt them first. His eyes snapped open in the dark, fangs lengthening before he was fully conscious. "They're here. For me."

Luka and Mira woke instantly, hands already moving to weapons.

The vampires hit the cave mouth in a coordinated rush. No words, no demands, no mercy—just hunger and the cold efficiency of predators following orders.

Mira threw up a wall of green fire across the entrance. It held them for a single heartbeat, flames roaring up to the ceiling—then one of the vampires, older and faster than the others, leaped clean through it. His cloak smoldered and burned away, revealing a gaunt figure with eyes like holes in the world. He aimed straight for Cassian with single-minded focus.

Cassian met him in the center of the chamber.

They collided in mid-air with a sound like thunder. The vampire was stronger—centuries of feeding, centuries of killing—but Cassian had something the older creature didn't. Desperation. The kind that came from having nothing left to lose. He drove his fist into the attacker's chest, claws punching through ribs with a wet c***k. The vampire hissed—a sound no living thing should make—and his fangs snapped at Cassian's exposed throat.

Luka tackled the second vampire from the side, shifting mid-leap, black fur exploding across his body. His jaws closed on the vampire's arm just below the elbow. Bone crunched between his teeth. The vampire screamed—a high, inhuman sound that echoed off stone—and raked claws across Luka's flank, opening four deep furrows that bled hot and fast.

Mira turned to face the third vampire. She did not hesitate. Did not freeze. Did not give him time to think. She lifted both hands and the green fire became a whip—solid and flexible as rope, burning without heat. It lashed around the vampire's legs, yanking him off balance. He fell hard, face cracking against stone. She stepped forward—small and terrible—and drove the obsidian dagger down with both hands into his heart.

The vampire stilled. Where blood should have flowed, only dust rose, drifting up like smoke.

The first vampire broke free of Cassian with a vicious twist, throwing him bodily against the cave wall. Cassian hit stone hard enough to c***k it, sliding down in a daze, vision swimming.

The vampire turned to Mira, seeing the easier target.

Luka released the second vampire's ruined arm and lunged with everything he had.

But the vampire was faster. Impossibly fast. He caught Mira by the throat with one hand, lifting her small body off the ground like she weighed nothing. Her feet kicked at air. "The witchling," he sneered, voice like grinding glass. "They said you burned your own mother. Fitting you should burn now."

Mira's eyes blazed pure emerald, brighter than any fire. She grabbed his wrist with both hands. Green flame raced up his arm, into his veins, spreading like infection. He screamed, a sound of pure agony, and dropped her.

Cassian was there before Mira hit the ground. He caught the vampire from behind, one hand gripping his hair, the other under his chin. He yanked the vampire's head back with savage force and sank his fangs into the exposed neck—not to drink, but to tear. The head came free with a wet, terrible sound. The body collapsed into ash that scattered across the stone floor.

The second vampire—arm hanging useless, black blood streaming down his side—tried to flee, scrambling for the tunnel mouth with animal panic.

Luka pounced. Claws and teeth finished it before it made it three steps. More ash joined the rest.

Silence returned to the chamber, heavy with dust and the copper smell of blood—both red and black.

Mira coughed, throat bruised in the shape of fingers. Luka shifted back to boy-form, bleeding from deep gashes across his ribs. Cassian wiped black vampire blood from his mouth with the back of his hand, eyes wide with something like shock at what he'd just done.

They looked at each other across the ash-strewn floor.

No words needed. Just the shared knowledge that something had changed. They had killed tonight. Not hunters protecting their farms. Not pack wolves testing their strength. These were vampires who had come with orders to claim or kill one of their own.

This was war now, whether they wanted it or not.

Cassian stared at the three piles of ash, each marking where a life centuries old had ended. "They were sent. By Darius. By my court."

Mira touched the obsidian dagger, still clenched in her hand, blade buried in ash. "We're not hidden anymore. Everyone knows now."

Luka licked blood—his own this time—from his claws, tasting copper and pain. His voice was calm, almost peaceful. "Good. Let them all come."

Outside, the quarry lay quiet under a field of stars so bright they seemed close enough to touch.

But far to the south, in the hidden tunnels that honeycombed the earth beneath Lagos, in chambers where sunlight had never reached, a vampire lord named Darius felt the sudden severing of three blood-threads he'd woven decades ago. Three servants. Gone. Just... gone.

He smiled—thin and cold as winter ice.

"So the abstainer has found friends." He turned to the court gathered in the shadows around his throne. "How interesting. Prepare a proper hunting party. I want them brought back alive."

He paused, smile widening to show fangs like needles.

"Most of them, anyway."

In the carved cavern, three children cleaned ash from their hands and faces with water from the basin. They bandaged Luka's ribs. They soothed Mira's bruised throat. They sat together in their circle and counted their heartbeats until they slowed to something like normal.

They did not sleep that night.

They simply waited for the next dawn, weapons close, marks burning faint on their wrists.

And for whatever came with it.

The Triad had drawn blood.

Now the blood would answer.