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ASH

The forest breathes around me—ancient pines exhaling secrets that coat my tongue with copper and moss, an unwelcome intimacy that makes my skin prickle.

Mission parameters flash through my mind. Clear. Sequential. Safe.

“Target’s a klick northeast, in the clearing,” Colonel Graves said during the briefing, eyes betraying anticipation when he mentioned the stone key. “Dr. Litvak has the classified documents and the stone key. Your objective is simple. Retrieval, no casualties unless absolutely necessary.”

I ghost between shadows, boots whispering over fallen needles. My fingers buzz with electric awareness, bones humming at a frequency that makes my teeth ache.

Moonlight fractures through the canopy in liquid-silver splinters, and a single word claws up from somewhere deeper than thought.

Home.

Recognition detonates through my system, bones vibrating with certainty—my marrow remembering what my mind forgot. The scent of pine and decay fills spaces inside me I never knew existed.

Twenty-seven missions. Each one impossible.

Each time Graves watched my briefing with that smile—like he knew I’d survive things that should kill anyone else.

Somewhere behind me, the wind shifts.

And with it—a whisper. Faint. Childlike.

Ashlynne.

I whip around. Nothing but trees. Bark slick with moonlight, shadows too deep.

Just my imagination. It has to be.

“Target’s half a klick northeast,” Davis whispers through the comms, dragging me back to reality. “Still stationary.” The static fragments scrape my eardrum raw, sound splintering into my skull like glass shards.

“Moving in,” I respond. The words grind against a throat suddenly parched, tongue thick and uncooperative.

My gut twists with primal warning—not intuition but knowing.

Time stretches like taffy pulled too thin. The watch on my wrist reads 2300 hours, but the bloated moon hanging overhead whispers that it’s much, much later.

Focus. Assess. Compartmentalize.

Something flickers at the edge of my vision—pale and fluid, moving through trees like water through fingers. I pivot, weapon raised in one liquid motion. My heart lurches at the sight.

Nothing .

But my skin dances with awareness, that sixth sense that’s kept me alive when reality says I should have died a thousand times.

The forest watches me.

I would swear to it on every weapon I’ve ever carried.

I round a massive oak that—I swear to whatever gods are listening—wasn’t blocking my path seconds ago.

The world stops.

My lungs seize mid-breath while my vision tunnels, narrowing to a single impossible point. My heart stumbles over its rhythm— thud-pause-thud-thud-pause —as something buried in my marrow identifies her before my conscious mind can process what stands before me.

She’s not human.

Her skin gleams like moonlight captured in water. When she moves, the shadows bend. Follow her.

Moonlight tracks her like a searchlight, leaving everything else in impossible darkness.

Eyes green as forest depths with no whites at all stare into mine—not looking, seeing . Peeling away layers I didn’t know existed, reaching past skin and muscle and bone to something I’ve spent a lifetime burying.

She smells like petrichor and starlight—like the air right before a storm breaks, electric and heavy and inevitable.

My lungs burn for air I’ve forgotten how to take, throat closing so tight not even a whimper escapes. Black spots bloom across my vision, reality tunneling inward as oxygen depletes.

“Ashlynne,” she whispers.

The name—both mine and not mine—vibrates not through air but through bone. A name I’ve never heard spoken aloud but that resonates through my entire being like a missing puzzle piece suddenly slotting into place.

I blink—just once—and she vanishes.

“No, wait—” The words tear from my throat. Desperate. Feral. My nails dig into bark until they bend backward, pain lancing up my fingertips as adrenaline blooms across my tongue, metallic and sharp.

My heart slams against my ribs. This isn’t like the glimpses I’ve had before. Faces in trees that could be dismissed. Whispers in the wind that could be denied.

This was real. I swear it.

The copper tang of blood floods my mouth—I’ve bitten through the inside of my cheek, tissue yielding to the need to feel something real.

“Get it together, Morgan,” I whisper. The name the government gave me when they found me—a lost child with no memory and no identity beyond the faded letters stitched into my torn jacket.

The adoption papers say I was approximately three years old.

Just another orphan from nowhere. I force myself forward, tracking the signal from the research Dr. Litvak stole.

The signal leads to a clearing where moonlight pools like liquid silver, too bright, almost tangible.

Trees lean away from the center as if afraid.

At the clearing’s heart stands a stone altar with symbols carved so deep they drink moonlight.

They shouldn’t make sense—but something beneath my consciousness recognizes them.

Kneeling before it, Dr. Litvak. His eyes stop me—too bright, unblinking, pupils blown until only the thinnest rim of iris remains. His movements jerk like badly edited film.

His hands hover over something small and bright that pulses with a heartbeat. The stolen files lie open beside him, pages ruffling in a breeze that doesn’t touch my skin. He chants in a cadence that tugs at something buried deep inside me—a rhythm I shouldn’t recognize but do.

“Target acquired,” I whisper, voice breaking as his chanting makes my skin sing. “Moving in.”

“Copy that,” Davis replies through static. The team calls me Ghost—not for pale skin, but for how I move through these woods like I own them.

Three steps away. Two. One.

I press my weapon to the base of Litvak’s skull, the metal burning cold against my palm. “Hands where I can see them, Doctor.”

He freezes mid-syllable, the unfinished word hanging in the air between us like something solid and alive. Slowly, he raises his hands.

“You interrupt sacred work, mortal. “His voice resonates at a frequency that makes my teeth ache and my vision blur.

Mortal?

I’ve met guys with god complexes before, but this is next level delusional. Still, the way he says it doesn’t just send ice water trickling down my spine—it freezes the marrow in my bones.

“I’m interrupting theft of government property,” I say. Voice steady despite the tremor that starts in my hands and radiates through my chest. I mask unease with detachment, keeping my tone flat while my pulse kicks against my throat. “On your feet. Slowly.”

As Litvak rises, something on the altar catches my eye—a small stone covered in swirling symbols that seem to shift and dance in the moonlight. For a heartbeat, I swear they rearrange themselves into words my eyes shouldn’t be able to read.

Stone of power. Stone of old. Stone to test the bearer’s worth.

My vision narrows to a pinpoint, the world shrinking to just me and those dancing symbols that write themselves into my consciousness. The meaning bypasses thought, landing directly in bone and blood and the spaces between heartbeats.

That split-second distraction costs me.

Litvak spins with impossible speed, slashing at me with something that flashes silver in the moonlight. I jerk backward. Not quickly enough.

The blade slices through my gear into my forearm.

What hits me isn’t pain—it’s awakening. Fire and ice simultaneously, something ancient spiraling through my bloodstream.

Every heartbeat pushes it further.

My body becomes a battleground between what I’ve always been told I am and what I’ve always been.

I don’t cry out. Training takes over and I move to pin Litvak. My body flows wrong. Too fast. Too fluid. Like a predator, not a soldier.

I drive my knee into his solar plexus, executing a perfect takedown. Pinning him face-first to the forest floor. Dirt and pine needles embed in his sweat-slick face.

“Target secured,” I say into my comms. Voice steady despite the burning spreading from the cut. “Package recovered.”

Litvak twists his head. Eyes suddenly wide with fascination rather than pain or anger.

He stares at my arm where the blade cut me.

Then his gaze flicks to my neck, just behind my ear where the birthmark pulses hot against my cold skin.

It throbs in time with my heartbeat, each pulse sending waves of heat across my scalp.

How can he even see it?

Then he speaks—not in English. Not in any language I’ve ever studied. Words that should be meaningless gibberish.

“Féachann an fhuil ríoga go hálainn faoi sholas na gealaí.”

The royal blood looks beautiful in the moonlight.

What. The. Actual. Fuck.

The words slam into my brain like a download. No translation needed. My mouth opens to respond in the same language. I bite my tongue hard enough to draw blood.

My throat burns with the effort of containment, muscles spasming around sounds desperate to escape.

“What did he say?” Davis asks, jogging into the clearing with the backup team. “What language was that?”

I examine my weapon, checking the safety. “He complimented my appearance.” The words come out flat, emotionless. “Said I look beautiful in the moonlight.”

Davis’s eyes narrow. “That’s not what it sounded like.”

“You asked what he said. That’s what he said.” I meet his stare without blinking. “Whether it sounded like poetry to you is your interpretation.”

“Ash—”

“He also mentioned blood. And royalty. And something about being lost.” Each word delivered factually. “Satisfied? Or would you like me to conjugate the verbs too?”

The team exchanges glances. Davis steps closer, invading my space.

“You understood all of it.”

“I understood enough.” Truth. I understood every syllable, but enough covers that without lying. “Amazing what context clues can do.”

Before Davis can try again, Litvak laughs—a sound of wonder rather than mockery. His eyes lock with mine, pupils expanding until darkness swallows reason. He speaks again in that same impossible language.