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CHAPTER 17

LUCAS

I don’t wait for the glyphs to finish lighting the walls. “Fall back!” I bark, my voice echoing through the corridor.

Sophia’s already turning, her hand gripping the blade at her thigh, eyes scanning for the others. Max and Kylie appear around the bend just as another pulse rolls off the dais—a deeper one, louder than the rest. The air folds in on itself, heat slamming into us in a rush that carries more than just sound—it carries pressure, lots of it.

I grab Sophia’s arm and shove her behind me just as the shockwave hits.

The sound is a thunderclap wrapped in fury. The walls scream. Stone cracks. Glyphs stutter and collapse inward. Light bends sideways, drawn toward the windglass in the center of the gate as if gravity’s forgotten where it belongs. My ears ring, and I hit the floor hard, skidding back into the curve of the hall.

One of the Nightshade scouts—a young male barely old enough to carry a blade—cries out. I look up just in time to see the ceiling drop. A jagged spire of stone spears through his torso, pinning him like a hunted animal to the glyph-washed wall. He doesn’t scream again.

Sophia shouts something, but the roar is too loud. I crawl back to her, grabbing her shoulder and dragging her with me toward cover, her feet scrambling to keep pace. Max and Kylie follow, close and silent, weapons drawn. Oscar follows.

Another sound joins the chaos. Lower. Slower. Like breath echoing inside a coffin made of steel.

The windglass is no longer just glowing. It’s stretching.

I turn, teeth bared, ready for anything. But what I see… it doesn’t belong in this world.

The center of the gate warps. A slick bulge pushes outward, the windglass rippling like fluid held behind something too fragile to contain it. Lines crack across its surface. Black veins of power curl through it. The ancient stone frame groans under the strain.

And then I hear it… the call.

Not a whisper this time. Not even a command. It’s a summons—a violent pull that wraps around my ribcage and yanks. My knees go weak. My wolf surges to the surface, no longer confused. No longer fighting.

“Answer. Come to me. Open.”

Pain lances through my skull. I drop to one knee, biting back the sound clawing up my throat. I can’t hold it. I can’t hold him.

The storm that’s lived under my skin since Cain’s lab. I don’t break. I become.

The change isn’t violent. It isn’t beautiful. It’s absolute. My body moves without hesitation, muscle and energy folding inward and then outward. There’s no tearing, no snapping, no time to scream. Just silence. Mist rises from the ground and then floods from every pore—silver and dark, swirling like storm clouds in fast forward.

Sophia stumbles back a step, her lips parting, eyes wide. But not in fear.

She sees me. Fully. And then she shifts, too.

Her form twists in a burst of crackling electricity, lightning skimming her skin like war paint before her body shifts down. Mist and light spiral around her, limbs elongating in a surge of precision and power. Where I’m shadow and smoke, she’s fire and fury. Silver eyes. Silver fur. Lightning caught in a body that never should’ve held it.

She lands beside me with her chest low and ears forward. One breath. We run.

Max swears behind us, but I don’t hear the rest of it. I leap from the corridor into the chamber, just as the first of the gate-born creatures cracks through the windglass and hits the stone.

It moves like it doesn’t know how its body works yet—jerky, limbs folding wrong—but it’s fast. Twice the size of a normal wolf, with slick gray skin where fur should be and spines down its back like broken glass. No eyes. Just hollows.

It hisses, and a second one slithers out behind it.

Sophia’s growl cuts through the air like a warning shot. The lead creature turns. Recognizes her. Or me. Or both. It doesn’t matter.

She charges first. I flank left.

The creature leaps—awkward, off-balance—but it’s strong. Too strong. Sophia crashes into its side with her full weight, lightning exploding from her shoulders, and it screams . Not in pain. Not like prey. It screams like something that remembers what it once was—and hates what it’s become.

I hit the second one low, driving it back across the glyphs. It claws at the floor for purchase, but I don’t give it a chance. My jaws snap around its foreleg and I pull. The bone doesn’t break. There’s no bone. Just... tissue. Muscle fused to something darker.

A blast of light sears the wall behind me. Max.

He’s covering our backs. Kylie is moving behind him, warding glyphs in her hands, activating one after the other as fast as she can scrawl them. She’s sweating. Swearing. But she’s not slowing down.

Sophia shoves the first creature back, then pivots, kicking off the stone in a flash of silver and impact. The second one hisses again, then lunges. I meet it midair. We roll, my claws locked into the back of its shoulders, driving it into the rock with a sickening slap.

It stops moving… just for a second. Then its body jerks—not of its own power.

The glyphs flare. Sophia barks once—a short warning call.

I look at the gate. The windglass is gone. Shattered. Behind it, something moves.

Not a creature. Not yet. Just a presence.

The scent hits me last. Not blood. Not death. Old magic. Foul and endless.

A piece of something else is pressing through. Not a hand. Not a claw. Just a shadow. But the surrounding stone fractures in its wake.

Max turns to me, eyes wide. “They’re coming through in pieces.”

Sophia snarls and leaps again, dragging the first creature toward the dais. Her lightning scorches the floor, burning glyph trails into the stone. The creature twitches. Then seizes. Then stops.

Dead—and not just partly, but in its entirety.

I brace beside her. My form solid, mist curling around my paws, ears flat against my skull.

We have seconds. Maybe less.

Kylie yells from behind us. “They’re not stopping! The glyphs are summoning more!”

Sophia turns, eyes meeting mine. I see the question there. Can we hold the line? I give her what she needs—one slow nod.

We stand shoulder to shoulder in the chamber where Lina turned herself into a gate.

The next wave is coming.

The second wave crashes through the gate with a scream that rattles the stone beneath my paws.

They’re faster this time. More coordinated. The first two were scouts—prototypes. These things? They’re made for war.

Sophia lunges into the lead one like lightning incarnate, her body a blur of silver and storm. Her claws dig into its throat, and she drives them both to the ground in a crackle of mist and fury. The creature thrashes beneath her, shrieking, its malformed jaw snapping in wild spasms, but she doesn't hesitate. Her stormlight pours through her fangs and into its chest.

It detonates.

The light doesn’t just burn it—it breaks it apart. The glyphs carved into its hide fracture like shattered bone, pieces turning to dust before they hit the floor.

But the others don’t retreat.

Three more pour through, crawling low and fast, movements twitchy like they haven’t figured out how to exist in this world yet—but they’re adapting.

One darts toward Kylie. She throws a dagger—precision perfect—and it catches the thing in the eye. Or what would’ve been an eye if the face wasn’t some horror of split cartilage and open bone. The blade sticks, but the creature doesn’t fall. It charges harder.

Max barrels into it with a ward charge burning across his palm. Glyphs flare along his forearm—Windrider, Ironclaw and Nightshade runes working together—and when he slams it into the creature’s ribs, the impact sends both of them flying.

Kylie doesn’t waste the opening. She’s on it with her blade before it can right itself, slicing through its throat in three short hacks. The body spasms once… then dies.

The second creature rushes me. I meet it mid-air.

We collide with a force that sends us skidding across the dais, my claws finding its underbelly and tearing through the glyph-lined hide like wet parchment. It shrieks, but I clamp my jaws around its throat and rip it open before it can claw my chest. I taste something wrong—metallic, but old, as if it had brewed in some alchemist’s vat for a century.

The body thrashes, kicking wildly, but I don’t let go until it goes still.

I drop it. Blood smears the surrounding stone. My breath comes hard and fast through clenched fangs, but I don’t stop.

Sophia is still standing. Her form is ringed in flickering light, streaks of violet and silver dancing across her fur like war banners. She turns toward the next one just as it leaps from the dais. This one is bigger—twice the size of the others—it’s spine curved like it broke and reformed on the wrong axis. It moves too fast to track with the naked eye. But she sees it coming.

Her paws brace. The air crackles. Then, she launches upward, twisting midair with a scream that carries every storm she’s ever swallowed.

Her claws rip through its chest. Lightning explodes outward in a spiral that lights up the entire room. The creature freezes in midair, convulses, and drops like a puppet with cut strings. Smoke coils from the gaping hole where its heart should be.

Silence drops. For a second, there’s no movement. Just the sound of dripping blood and scorched stone hissing under pooled heat.

The gate pulses.

Once.

Twice.

Then steadies.

The glyph rings around the dais light up again—not erratically this time, but with purpose. Measured. Controlled. As if something wants this pattern to hold.

Sophia lands hard beside me, panting. Blood mats her fur. Her eyes are wild, but she stands. I pad to her side, our shoulders brushing. I don’t speak. We both hear it.

The voice—it doesn’t come from the gate. It doesn’t echo through the stone or travel through our comms. It’s not even a whisper. It’s inside us.

"Your power is not enough. Feed the gate. Feed the bond."

Sophia’s head jerks. Her ears flatten. She heard it too.

I bare my teeth, hackles rising. They think we’ll do it for them. That the storm between us is something they can use. Not happening.

Behind us, Kylie limps into view, blood smeared down one thigh. Her blade is still slick with gore. “What the hell was that voice?”

Sophia drops her head, shaking with exhaustion. Her form flickers—light sliding off her like water—and a moment later she’s on two legs again, naked and blood-spattered, but defiant.

I shift a second later. Still riding the edge of something primal, but I bring it down with effort, pulling my humanity back one breath at a time.

Kylie tosses Sophia a sweater, which she drags over her shoulders and me my pants and mutters, “You’re welcome.”

“Appreciated. Not Cain,” I say.

“Not Lina either,” Sophia murmurs. “Older.”

“Worse,” Max says, stepping around the ruin of a hybrid, his face drawn tight. “Whatever’s behind that gate, it’s not just trying to break through. It’s adapting. Every time it pulses, it gets smarter.”

Sophia stares at the windglass. “It’s stabilizing itself. We damaged the ritual, but the gate’s learning. It’s forming its own anchor now.”

The windglass pulses again. Just once. No creatures come through this time. It’s waiting. Stalking.

Max steps into the circle of light, eyes fixed on the gate. “They don’t need to open it anymore.”

We all look at him.

“They just need us to.”

The windglass pulses again—gentler this time. Almost like a heartbeat.

I stare at it, jaw tight, every instinct I have screaming. I know what that voice meant now. Feed the gate. Feed the bond. They’re not just using Lina’s glyphs. They’re using us .

The bond between me and Sophia is the final seal. And if we break, if we fail, if we so much as touch that anchor in the wrong way… we’ll be the ones who open the damn thing.

Nope. Not today.

I walk to the edge of the dais, stare into the still-glowing heart of the gate.

“You want a bond?” I mutter. “Come and take it.”

And for the first time since we entered this cursed place… the gate doesn’t pulse back.