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Chapter

Twenty-Nine

IN THE TEMPLE RUINS

The air is sharp with magical aftershock.

The hunter’s curse has touched everything, reaching far and wide.

Broken and renewed magic clings to the trees like mist—silver strands warping and fraying against the roots of the world, unraveling patterns that have held for thousands of years.

Each thread that snaps sends ripples through the fabric of reality itself, and those who know how to look can see the web of power reshaping itself with every passing moment.

The ruins themselves feel like they’re trying to come back together. In the sudden silence of night creatures, who sense a fundamental shift in the order of things, and in the distance, where the old roads have been reclaimed by wilderness and memory, the disturbance is felt most keenly.

Three cloaked figures stand beneath a canopy of withered trees, avoiding the temple. The grove is older than the kingdoms, older than the first settlements, older perhaps than the curse itself. Here, the barrier between worlds has always been thin and easily torn.

Tonight, it trembles.

They do not move as mortals move. They are too still, too perfect in their positioning, like pieces arranged on a board by an unseen hand.

Their cloaks are cut from shadow itself, drinking in the moonlight and giving nothing back.

But their attention is absolute, focused on something far beyond the physical distance that separates them from the broken sanctuary.

“She did it,” one finally says, voice low and melodious, carrying harmonics that intermingle with the magic.

The words hang in the air like smoke, and the trees lean in to listen. Even the wind holds its breath.

Another figure snorts, like rustling leaves and distant thunder. “No. He did.”

Their tones carry centuries of frustration, of plans laid but denied fruition, of outcomes that refuse to align with expectation. There is something almost petulant in it, the irritation of a chess master whose carefully positioned pieces have been sacrificed by their own hand.

“He was always the wild card,” the first continues, tone carrying a hint of grudging respect. “We factored in her strength, her mixed bloodline, her training. We did not account for his capacity for… selflessness.”

“She survived. That’s worse.” The second one turns toward the distant sanctuary, and the air around the trio shimmers with heat despite the cooling night. “The dam was meant to hold until we were ready. Until everything was ready.”

The third figure steps forward, and her movement is like watching water flow uphill—natural and impossible all at once.

When she pushes back her hood, the face revealed is neither young nor old.

It is a face that could belong to anyone, or no one, carved from moonlight and etched with the weight of ages.

Her bare hands glow faintly gold, and the light spreads up her arms like veins of liquid fire.

“The hunter line was a dam.” Her voice carries the authority of someone who has shaped the world with words before. “Containing something that was never meant to be contained. Now it’s broken, and she’s the current with all that power and potential, flowing free.”

The golden light pulses stronger, and in its radiance, the clearing changes. The withered trees straighten, their branches reaching toward a sky that suddenly seems larger, deeper, filled with stars that wheel in patterns that defy astronomy. The very air thickens with possibility.

“She doesn’t know what she is.” The first figure’s tone is clinical, almost bored. “Doesn’t know what she’s become. That gives us time.”

“Time for what?” The second’s voice cracks like breaking ice. “Time to watch her stumble into power that could remake the world? Time to hope she doesn’t discover what her bloodline really carries?”

“Time to prepare. To ensure that when she does discover the truth, she makes the right choice.”

A hush falls over the clearing, heavy and expectant. In the distance, something howls—not wolf, not quite human, but something caught between worlds. The sound raises the hair on the back of necks that no longer remember what it means to live in the world with others.

Then the second one speaks again, quieter now, almost fearful. “What now? The bindings are broken, barriers are failing. Every fae from here to the Sunless Sea will feel this before dawn.”

“Let them feel it.” The first shrugs. “Let them remember what they’ve forgotten. Recall why the old curses were made.”

The third figure’s golden light dims, and she lowers her hands.

In the sudden darkness, their features blur back into ambiguity, but their eyes burn with an inner fire that has nothing to do with magic and everything to do with purpose.

“The girl is not our enemy. She’s a tool.

A key to something larger than herself.”

“And if she refuses to be used?” the second asks.

“We give her no choice.”

The first sighs, a sound like wind through empty halls. “Now we pray the key doesn’t open the wrong lock.”

As they speak, the clearing changes again.

The golden light that had faded from the third’s hands doesn’t disappear.

Rather it sinks into the ground itself, spreading outward like roots, like a network of power that connects this place to others.

To sanctuaries and stone circles and forgotten temples where other watchers wait.

The time of waiting is nearly over.

Something stirs behind them. At first, it seems like nothing more than a trick of shadow and moonlight. Then the shape becomes clear. It is impossibly tall and thin to the point of insubstantiality. It has no face, no features, no substance that can be described or understood.

But it has a presence that won’t be ignored. One older than the curse, older than the ancient establishments, older than the first humans who learned to fear the dark.

It does not speak. Does not need to. Its very existence is communication enough—a reminder of what waits beyond the barriers, what has always waited, what will continue to wait until the proper moment arrives.

“Call her if we must,” the third whispers, the words seeming to flow directly into the shadow-thing’s awareness. “But not before we’re ready. Not before the pieces are in place.”

The shadow inclines what might be a head, the movement sending ripples through reality itself. Then it begins to fade, dissolving back into the darkness between heartbeats, between thoughts, between the spaces where light fears to go. But its presence lingers.

The first figure pulls her hood back up. “The wise woman will want to know.”

“She has been waiting for this longer than any of us,” the second replies. “She’ll know before we can tell her.”

“And the others?”

“The others will do what they’ve always done. Wait, watch, and prepare.”

The third one is already beginning to fade, her form becoming translucent around the edges. “The girl has friends. Allies. People who would die for her. More every day.”

“And people who have died for her,” the first adds.

“Yes. That makes her dangerous. And dangerous things…” The third’s voice grows distant as she continues to fade. “Dangerous things must be handled with care.”

The forest darkens as the three vanish, one by one, leaving only the faintest impression of their presence—that the world has shifted in a fundamental way.

The withered trees return to their natural state as magic fades, branches gnarled and lifeless. The stars wheel back into their proper positions, but the wind that rises in their wake carries more than the scent of ash and dying magic.

It carries whispers. Plans. The echo of ancient names that should not be spoken aloud. Through it all, one word drifts on the night air, spoken by voices that might be wind or might be something else entirely.

“Soon.”

In the distance, a wolf howls—free now, but confused by its freedom. It doesn’t know its cry is answered by things that are not wolves, that have never been wolves, that remember when the world was young and the boundaries between realms were drawn in starlight.

The figures are gone, but their presence lingers like a stain on the world.

In the far distance, where a girl grieves for a father who chose death over corruption, the first threads of a new pattern begin to weave themselves into the fabric of magic itself.

The curse is broken.

But some things are worse than curses.

Some things are weapons.