Page 13

CHAPTER 12

SOPHIA

I flip open the journal that Lucas gave me with reverence and dread. The pages are brittle, lined with age, but the ink is still easily legible. A steady, deliberate hand—no flourishes, no sentiment—etched every word. Just purpose.

The Windrider elder who wrote this had seen the War of Mists firsthand. Fought it. Survived it. His entries start like a record—documenting signs of encroachment, elemental imbalances, disappearances. Then it shifts. Or maybe he does. Somewhere around the midpoint, his writing turns frantic. Desperate. Focused entirely on the glyph.

He calls it Kith’Tarn . The Final Sigil. A banishment mark that can burn through flesh and the veil that lies beyond the doorway, keeping the world safe from the Deep Below. Windwoven blood is the only thing that can activate it. But not just any Windwoven. It requires balance—two sources of storm-touched power, anchored in opposite energies.

“One bound to storm, one forged in flame.”

I read that line a dozen times before it hits. He wasn’t talking about fire and weather. He meant polarity. Rage and stillness. Lightning and stone. Lucas and I.

I see sketches—sprawling glyphs, patterns of coiled wind, and branching storm paths—filling the page beneath my fingertips. And in the center, a seal marked in bold strokes. The lines twist as if drawn with agony, not ink. It's not just a glyph—it’s a warning. A ward. A weapon.

Cain must have found it. That’s what Ryder was afraid of. But Cain’s not using it to keep the gate closed. He’s trying to invert it—to turn a banishment into a summons.

My pulse kicks faster. If I can unravel the pattern, I might be able to reverse the reversal. Take back control of the sigil. But it wouldn’t be as simple as redrawing a few strokes. The glyph was designed to seal something ancient behind a fractured veil. It demands equal sacrifice from both wielders—stormblood from each side. Elemental balance.

If I’m right, Lucas and I would have to give it everything. Not just blood. Power. Essence. Whatever thread ties us to the Windwoven bond would have to be used as a conduit. Once. Maybe only once.

I slam the journal shut, breath sharp in my chest. Across the table, Lucas looks up from the comms bead he’s syncing with Ryder.

“You find something?” he asks, voice rough.

I hold up the book. “The glyph. It’s not a portal key. It’s a banishment seal. One of the last used to close the gate during the War of Mists.”

His eyes narrow. “So how the hell is Cain using it to open things?”

“Because he’s twisting it. Reworking the balance.”

Lucas swears under his breath. “What do you need?”

“Stormblood. Two sources.” I look him dead in the eye. “Me. And you.”

His brow furrows. “Why me?”

I flip the journal open again, pushing it across the table. “You’re not Windrider, but the storm answers you. The mist bends for you. You’re marked, Lucas. You always have been.”

He stares at the glyph. Then he nods. Once. No hesitation.

“We’ll do it.”

We barely make it out of the war room before an argument erupts downstairs.

Members of various packs have filled the Nightshade lodge. Two packs just arrived from the western range, and already the air is heavy with accusation. Elder Brant, all bristle and bared teeth, is snarling at one of the Windrider emissaries.

“Your people brought this,” Brant says. “It’s your blood in that glyph. Your kind gave Cain what he needed.”

The emissary, Kael, stands tall but unmoved. “Our blood sealed the gate once before. Your packs have ignored the warnings we offered you for years.”

“Enough.” Ryder’s voice cuts through the noise like a blade. “You want to assign blame? Do it after we survive this.”

I step forward. “The glyph isn’t Cain’s creation. He’s using something ancient—something we only half-understand. Fighting each other over scraps won’t stop him.”

Brant scowls. “We should prepare to strike. Hit the neutral territories. Find his operatives and cut them down.”

“And what if you’re wrong?” I ask. “What if you kill wolves who have no part in this?”

Brant shrugs. “Collateral damage.”

Lucas’s voice cuts in, low and deadly. “Try that near our pack and I’ll put you in the dirt myself.”

Brant turns, but the look in Lucas’s eyes kills any retort he was going to make. The elder mutters something and storms off, his assistant in tow.

Kylie appears beside me, flipping her knife between her fingers like she’s been waiting to use it all morning.

“Well, that was productive,” she mutters.

“Ready for a field trip?” I ask, already grabbing my coat.

Her grin is all teeth. “You know I live for cryptic detours into haunted territory.”

We head southeast on horseback—faster than waiting for transport to be cleared. Rolling fog, the kind that clings to skin and seeps into bone, covers the lowlands. The Windrider historian we’re looking for lives on the edge of an abandoned orchard, a wide, sloping property overrun with gnarled trees and storm bells hanging from every branch. The air hums with latent magic. Familiar. Dangerous.

Her name is Karla, and she opens the door before we even knock.

“I felt you coming,” she says, eyes bright. “Stormborn and blade-bonded. Come in.”

The inside of her house is a maze of scrolls, bound skins, and books tied shut with wire and salt-thread. Kylie immediately finds the liquor shelf and helps herself to a dusty glass of something that smells like pine and melted ice.

“We need to know more about Lina,” I say.

Karla’s face darkens. “Why now?”

“Because she’s not dead.”

That stops her.

“They exiled her,” I continue. “But Cain found her. Or she found him. Either way, they’re working together.”

Karla walks to a shelf and pulls down a scroll, cracked and ancient. She lays it flat on the table. “Lina wasn’t just exiled. People believed her to be destroyed. Her power fractured the bond. She started carving Windwoven sigils into her skin—burning them with iron. She thought if she carried the glyphs in her body, she could control the storm without channeling it. No conduit. Just pain.”

Kylie leans over the scroll. “Did it work?”

“She survived it. Barely.” Karla taps a mark—one I recognize from the glyph in Cain’s lab. “But it broke her. She didn’t believe in balance anymore. Only obedience.”

“And now she’s back,” I say softly. “I saw her.”

They both look at me.

“In a vision,” I add. “While reading one of the older scrolls. She was with Cain. They were standing at the gate. And her skin… someone had carved it head to toe. The glyphs were black.”

Karla’s face goes pale. “Then she’s not just back. She’s feeding the gate.”

I nod. “And she knows how to open it from the other side.”

Kylie pulls her second blade and tucks it into her boot. “Guess that answers whether we’re going to need more knives.”

I fold the scroll carefully, tuck it under my arm, and stand. “We need to go. If Lina’s this close to finishing the summoning pattern, we’re already behind.”

Karla touches my wrist. “Be careful. Stormblood can seal the gate again—but only if it’s truly balanced. That means sacrifice.”

I nod, throat tight. “I know.”

As we ride back toward the mountains, the wind picks up. Not just a breeze—this is the storm calling. The bond surging beneath the earth.

And in the distance, I swear I feel something respond. Not just the wind. But the gate… it’s waking, and Lina’s going to make damn sure it doesn’t sleep again.

The mist starts low—thin curls of fog trailing across the path like spilled breath—but it moves wrong. Too precise. Too aware.

I rein in my horse with a low whistle. Kylie does the same a few yards ahead, turning in her saddle.

“You feel that?” I ask.

“Yeah. Something’s off.” She flips the safety off the crossbow mounted to her saddle. “People consider the lowlands to be haunted as hell, but that’s different.”

I let the reins go slack, letting my fingers graze the leather pommel of my blade. My pulse isn’t racing, but my skin has that static-tingle feeling like before a lightning strike. The air is too still. The birds are too quiet. I nudge my horse forward, careful. Controlled.

And then I hear it—one breath too many. Just off the trail, buried behind the veil of fog.

I dismount without a word. Kylie doesn’t speak, but I feel her move in the saddle, angling to cover my flank. I walk a few paces into the trees, drawing the blade at my back. The silence thickens like honey, cloying and slow.

Another step… then the crack of a branch—barely audible—but I’m already moving.

I pivot hard and drive my blade toward the source, just as something rushes me from the side. I duck, roll, and land in a crouch.

He’s Crimson Claw, but barely. His body is too thin, too stretched. Like Cain stitched muscle where there should be bone. His eyes glow red in the fog, and his mouth is curled in a snarl, fangs visible even in his half-formed face. He doesn’t speak. Just launches at me again, and I don’t hold back.

The storm answers me before I even call it. It surges from the soles of my feet, drawn through my veins, riding the crackling fury that’s been waiting since I saw Lina’s face in that vision. Mist coils around me, shot through with violet and silver. My fingers twitch, and the air splits with a thunderclap.

Lightning tears down from the sky like it’s tethered to my spine. The force of the change rips through me—mist and wind crashing through every bone, bending muscle and form into my other self. I hit the ground on four legs, silver fur slick with rain that hasn’t fallen yet.

The Crimson Claw doesn’t flinch. He comes at me fast—too fast—but I’m faster. I hit him low, taking him down at the ribs. The impact shudders through us both, but I recover first. My jaws clamp around his throat and I drive him into the dirt hard enough to crack roots. He kicks once, twice, then stops moving.

His scent is poison. Old blood, chemicals, something that shouldn’t exist. I pull back, heart thundering in my chest.

The ground trembles behind me, and I whip around, but it’s just Kylie. She stands a few feet away, casually wiping her blade on a patch of moss. Although her crossbow remains loaded, she doesn’t need it now. The fight’s over.

“Told you something was off,” she says. “That thing looked like it crawled out of Cain’s garbage disposal.”

I flick an ear.

She walks over and nudges the corpse with her boot. “Next time, can I kill first and ask questions never?”

I drop the form and stand, mist unraveling from my limbs in slow coils. I’m breathing hard. Not from exertion—adrenaline. Something about that scout was different. More distorted. Like Cain is getting bolder with whatever experiments he’s running.

“He was watching us,” I say, pulling my clothes from the saddle pack. “Tracking us the entire way.”

Kylie nods. “Think he saw what we got?”

“Doesn’t matter. He’s not reporting back.”

She grins. “Dibs on the next one.”

We make the rest of the ride in silence. I stay alert, but the forest settles again. Whatever that scout was, he was alone—maybe sent ahead.

Cain knows. And if he didn’t before, he will now. By the time we return to the lodge, the sun has dipped behind the mountain’s ridge. Long shadows stretch across the yard, cast by towering pines and flickering torches. A few guards nod to us as we pass, but no one speaks.

Everyone feels it. The build-up. The storm gathering beyond the edge of what we can see.

Inside, Lucas is waiting by the stairs. He looks me over once—slow, deliberate—and something in his jaw loosens when he sees I’m fine. Not injured. Not bleeding.

He says nothing. He just reaches out, brushes his knuckles down my arm once, and then turns toward the war room, but I don’t follow. Not yet. I need space.

The observatory sits on the third floor of the lodge, overlooking the northeast range. It’s a quiet place. One the younger wolves avoid. Too many books, not enough action—perfect for what I need to do.

I close the door behind me and move to the center of the room. The floor is bare stone, polished smooth from decades of footsteps. I kneel and pull the chalk from my satchel. My fingers are still trembling, but the lines come steady. I’ve drawn this sigil three times today already. In dirt. On paper. Once on my skin.

But this is different. I mark the outer circle first—wide, even, enclosed. Then the threshold glyph. Next, the fracture runes. The banishment lines. I work slowly and precisely until I have replicated the entire seal on the stone below. Then I place my palm over the center and whisper the Windwoven call.

The air goes still. The glyph begins to glow. Faint at first—just a flicker. Like a coal catching light. But it pulses. Once. Twice. A steady rhythm.

Alive!

I press harder, trying to hold the connection. To read the glyph from the inside out, as the Windrider elder must have done all those years ago. And that’s when I see it—the reflection in the window beside me. Not the glyph. Not the glow.

But my face. Only—it’s not mine. The features are mine but altered. My eyes are darker. My hair is pulled back in a braid that looks too tight. Lines of script running down my cheek like carved lightning. The sigils are familiar. But they’re wrong. Twisted. The reflection smiles.

I jerk back so hard I fall onto my side, chalk scattering across the stone. The image vanishes.

I scramble to my knees, heart pounding so loud I can barely hear the wind outside. The glyph is still glowing. Still pulsing. I know what I saw.

It wasn’t just a vision. Or a trick of the light. It was her—Lina. She’s not just walking the world again. She’s watching me… and waiting.