Page 28 of The Midnight Death Match

“I’m not playing. I’m surviving. Just like you.”

“You said we should fight together,” I cut in. “Why?”

He steps away from the spring, circling slowly. “Because when the hunter line was first born, it wasn’t a curse. It was a pact. A binding of two bloods—one to guard the realm, the other to walk in shadow and root out the rot.”

Einar frowns. “There’s no record of that. You’re making it up.”

“No.” Lysandros shakes his head. “Because the first time the pact broke, it broke hard with a betrayal and a stolen heir. The wolf claimed the blade, and the magic unraveled. The blood was never meant to inherit the power. It was meant to share it.”

I go still. “Awolfwas involved in the hunter curse?”

He turns to me, expression unreadable. “You’re not just the echo of your parents’ power, Eira. You’re its convergence. The curse has tried to split you between wolf or hunter, but your body refuses. You’re both. If the curses are to break—you’re the answer.”

The wind brushes through the glade like a whisper.

“Two bloods will rise,” Lysandros says, “but one must lead.”

“And if they don’t?” Harek asks.

Lysandros ignores him and keeps his focus on me. He lifts a hand and gestures east, past the glade’s edge. “To the broken city of Courtsview. Once radiant, now devoured from within, a wound that never healed.”

A tug pulls in my chest, deep and cold. Recognition without understanding. Something stirs, something familiar. “What’s your part, Lysandros?”

“I told you to call me Lys.”

Again, Harek tenses next to me.

“Fine,” I say. “Lys, what’s your part?”

“I’m here to help you. This is bigger than you—both of you.” He quickly glances at my father. “It remembers the line that once kept its hunger in check. But the hunter’s weakening has awakened something in its depths. And it’s hungry for the lost crown.”

I stare at him. “The what?”

He smiles, almost gently. “It’s not your strength that Courtsview fears, mighty huntress.”

The light shifts. His form blurs, then he simply disappears.

The silence he leaves behind is heavier than his presence. For a moment, none of us moves. The light in the glade dims slightly, as if the magic is exhaling now that its guest is gone.

Near the spring, in the patch of wild grass where Lys stood, rests a glowing rune etched faintly into the ground. A fragment of the hunter’s crest, but reversed. Mirrored.

Like a reflection of something I haven’t yet become.

Einar crouches beside it, his brow furrowed. “I’ve never seen this variation. Not even in the ancient books.”

I draw in a deep breath. “He wanted us to find this. It’s a message.”

Harek kneels as well. “I think it’s a challenge.”

My fingers tighten around the hilt at my side. The sword pulses once. “He thinks we can stop the curse by working together. That if we don’t, Courtsview will be more than a warning, it’ll be a grave.”

Einar straightens, silent.

“This points toward the loophole,” I continue. “It fits with my idea that if we fight together, we can beat it.”

His eyes search mine—hardened, wary, uncertain. But not closed. At last, he nods. “Then we’ll try.”

The trees sway softly as we step back from the rune. The glade lets us go without resistance, but I feel its memory cling to my skin.