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CHAPTER 15

LUCAS

T he path narrows the higher we climb, winding through jagged ridgelines and shale-strewn drop-offs that would snap a weaker wolf’s ankle in half a second. The wind up here doesn’t just blow… it howls. The mountain doesn’t want us here. Neither does whatever waits inside for us.

Dead pine needles crunch under my boots, thick with frost, but I barely feel the cold. I’m running too hot—too wired, too aware. The energy in the air is wrong. It’s not just the altitude. The deeper we get into the Dead Valley range, the more the wind sounds like it’s speaking in a language no one understands. Except me.

We move in formation—tight, efficient, no wasted motion. Max flanks to the left, carrying a blade longer than my forearm and no time for bullshit. Kylie is on the right, tossing a small blade from hand to hand like she’s hoping something jumps out of the rocks just to break up the boredom. It won’t be boredom for long.

Sophia walks behind me. I feel her before I hear her—stormlight barely restrained, the surrounding air always just a little warmer, a little charged. We have spoken little since leaving the lodge this morning. We don’t need to. She’s already where I am. Head down. Eyes forward. Both of us locked into a rhythm that doesn’t come from planning. It’s instinct.

“I count four glyphs,” Max mutters as we reach a ridge, pointing with the tip of his blade. “Burned into the stone. Same mark as the threshold rune at the last facility.”

I crouch, brushing my fingers over one of them. The soot-covered rock is scorched. This wasn’t a drawing or a painting. It was a brand—heat-forged into the mountain.

Sophia steps up beside me. “These aren’t warning wards. They’re anchors.”

“Anchors for what?”

She points toward the valley below us. “A gate. This isn’t a lab, Lucas. It’s a ritual site. Look at the pattern—concentric placement, directional runes facing inward. Something’s buried in this rock, and they’re using these to call it up.”

Kylie glances over her shoulder. “So we’re hiking toward a haunted mountain altar. Love that for us.”

Oscar doesn’t laugh. He rarely does. Kylie’s the one with the sarcastic sense of humor. He taps the comms link in his ear and mutters, “Team One, be advised. Multiple glyphs found on the outer perimeter. Suggest structural binding ritual in progress.”

A crack of static answers, followed by, “Copy. Moving into secondary position.”

The other Nightshade scouts fan out while we push higher, the incline biting into my calves. Breathing gets harder the closer we get to the peak, but this is not altitude sickness. It’s something altogether different.

I hear it again. It starts low, beneath the wind. A hum more than a sound. It sinks into my bones like a vibration from within. Not painful—yet—but constant. Familiar. And wrong.

I stop moving. The mountain falls quiet. The team halts behind me.

Sophia’s voice is soft. “Lucas?”

I don’t answer. The hum is rising, splitting in two, then three—like it’s weaving a song only I can hear just under my skin. My vision darkens around the edges. The scent of ash fills my nose.

The call again. Clearer now. Like a rising whisper pressed to the base of my skull.

“Stoneblood. Stormborn. Come home.”

My hands shake. My wolf stirs, frantic, not with rage but confusion—torn between answering and fleeing—trapped and forbidden from doing either. I press my palm to the nearest boulder, trying to steady myself, but the glyph carved into it pulses beneath my skin like it recognizes me. Like it knows what I am.

“Lucas.” Sophia’s voice is sharper now.

I drop to one knee. The sound—no, the call—is clawing at my mind. My name echoes back at me in layers. A thousand voices. All me. All wrong.

Then hands. Warm, steady. Her hands.

Sophia drops in front of me, grabs my face between her palms, and slams her mouth onto mine.

The call stops as reason and reality return. The call shatters like glass. The world slams back into focus. The only sound now is the pounding of my heart and the soft, urgent rush of her breath against my lips.

She pulls back, eyes fierce. “We’re here.”

I grab her wrist, grounding myself with her pulse. “You felt it?”

“Enough to know it was trying to pull you apart. Don’t let it.”

I nod once. My voice doesn’t come easily, but I manage two words. “Thank you.”

We move again. Slower now. The air’s thicker, the wind heavier. Even the birds are gone. Dead silence hugs the upper slope, and the sky darkens unnaturally overhead as we reach the entrance carved into the mountainside.

They didn’t just build the facility into the rock—they grew it from the rock. Stone walls ripple with barely restrained glyph lines, each one feeding into the next like a living network of magic veins. Something tore open the entrance, creating a jagged oval that is too tall and too narrow. Oscar and the other Nightshade scout who accompanied us peel off to sweep the perimeter. Max and Kylie close ranks.

“I don’t like this,” Max says quietly, shaking his head as if to dispel something. “Feels like we’re walking into a gaping mouth with razor-like teeth.”

“Whoa. Descriptive much?” Kylie quips, tightening her grip on her knife. “Then let’s make sure it chokes on whatever it thinks to eat.”

The terrain turns brutal as we approach the entrance. Stone and ash underfoot, no grass, no moss, not even the stubborn alpine shrubs that usually cling to the bones of these mountains. Just a long stretch of jagged black rock, brittle as charred bone, steep enough to snap ankles and swallow knees. Every step is a calculated risk. One wrong move and we’re tumbling through a graveyard that predates names.

Max takes point, silent and watchful. His breathing is steady, but his body reads like a man walking into his own execution. Sophia and Kylie move just behind him, low and deliberate, blades out. I stay near the rear. Watching for anything that might come from behind. Listening for what I hope doesn’t come again.

But it does.

The sound starts as a pulse, deep in my chest. Like a war drum being played beneath the earth. Faint at first. Then louder. Then personal. It slides behind my ribs and slams into my spine with enough force to make my jaw lock. I stagger, just a little. No one sees.

Except her.

Sophia glances back, stops mid-step, and turns. Her braid’s half-loose from the climb, a streak of dirt across her cheek, but her eyes are sharper than any weapon we brought with us.

"Lucas." Just my name, but it’s enough.

I open my mouth to answer, to say I’m fine, but the words don’t come. The call gets louder. Not words. Not even sound. Just pressure . Like I’m being pulled forward by a leash wrapped around my spine.

My hands curl into fists. The rock beneath my boots ripples. No one else sees it. No one else hears the sound beneath the sound.

Except her. Sophie reaches me quickly, one hand going to my chest. The other wraps around the back of my neck. Her forehead presses to mine.

"Lucas," she says again, firmer. "You’re not down there. You’re here. With us. With me ."

I grit my teeth, but the pounding doesn’t stop. My wolf snarls inside me, desperate to follow, desperate to run straight into whatever wants to tear me apart.

Then she kisses me. It’s not soft. It’s not for comfort. It’s a strike. A jolt. Storm to storm. The contact is electric and immediate. My lungs catch. My pulse slams back into sync with hers. The wind kicks up around us, sharp and biting, and for a breathless second, everything else falls silent.

She pulls back only far enough to look at me. "We’re here. Stay here ."

And just like that, I can.

Max looks over his shoulder, expression unreadable. Kylie says nothing, but grins in her most infuriating manner.

We keep moving.

The last half mile is hell. The incline is nearly vertical in places, and the rock here isn’t natural. Someone etched glyphs into the surface—burning them into the stone with a precision that screams of old power. Spirals arrange some glyphs, landslides half-cover others, and some still glow faintly with heat as if recently marked.

Kylie stops to run her fingers along a jagged spiral cut into the wall. Her voice is tight. "This isn’t just a base. It’s a ritual site."

I nod. "The gate is near."

No one argues.

The entrance to the compound doesn’t look like much. Just a jagged tear in the rock, hidden behind a series of broken spires that must’ve once been a barrier wall. We move single file, weapons out, senses high. The air inside is colder. Wet. Something drips in the distance. Not water. Too thick.

We descend into a corridor carved from dark stone. Not a natural cave. Too smooth. Too deliberate. Every twenty feet, there’s another glyph. Some of them Windrider. Some I don’t recognize. Some I wish I didn’t. Scattered along the walls are flickering light panels—most broken.

The tunnel opens into a chamber, massive and echoing. It opens abruptly, a yawning cavern carved with inhuman precision, as if whatever made this place didn’t work with hands. The space is circular, massive, and dead silent. Our footsteps land hollow. Every sound bounces back like the mountain is mocking us. But it’s the center of the room that stops us cold.

A raised dais. Stone. Bone. Silver.

Five concentric circles surround the dais, each etched with glyphs. A crack mars the outermost circle. The second is pulsing faintly with light. The third—some symbols are bleeding. Not metaphorically. Bleeding. A thin trail of something dark seeps down the grooves.

At the center of it all is the gate.

It’s not just a door. It’s alive .

Made from silver and ancient bone, twined with runes and old elemental sigils, it stands ten feet high and half as wide. Chunks of black stone, pulsing like veins, have fused with the tarnished and cracked metal. A low thud comes from within it. Not sound. A heartbeat. Slow. Measured—like something on the other side is asleep and starting to wake up.

I hear it again. But this time, it doesn’t pull. It warns.

Sophia edges forward with me, her voice barely above a whisper. “The heartbeat.”

She’s right. The gate pulses. Not like a machine. Like a living thing.

I scan the floor—no guards, no Crimson Claw in sight. Too quiet.

Kylie points to a panel half-buried beneath glyph dust. “Something has recently been activated.” That means someone’s still here.”

I nod once, every nerve on fire.

The gate pulses again. The heartbeat inside it is getting stronger. And I know, without question, that whatever is waiting behind that veil? It’s awake. And it knows we’ve arrived.

Sophia touches my arm. "The air’s different."

"How?"

"It’s humming. Like it’s listening."

Kylie lets out a low whistle. "That’s not a gate. That’s a promise."

Max doesn’t speak. He just stares, and I see something in his expression that chills me worse than the wind outside.

Recognition.

Sophia steps up beside me. Her voice is quiet. "It’s not fully open. But it’s close."

"How close?"

She swallows hard. "Close enough that it can feel us."

I turn back to the others. "We don’t split. Not for anything. If something moves, we kill it. If the gate so much as shudders, we get the hell out."

Kylie cocks her head. "And if it opens ?"

I meet her gaze dead-on. "Then we make sure nothing walks through it alive."

The heartbeat from the gate slows. For now.

But I know better than to think we have time. We’re standing on the edge of something ancient. Something that doesn’t care who we are, only that we bleed. And whatever Cain and Lina have been building toward… this is just the beginning.

And beginnings? They always cost more than you think.