Page 56 of The Midnight Death Match

It carves a deeper crack than any lie.

“Anything is possible, but I don’t know what they kept from me. The one thing I can promise you isI’venever hidden anything from you. Ever.”

His honesty stings more than if he’d lied. It means he’s as lost as I am.

“I just need to understand who I am.” My voice cracks. “And it feels like I may never know fully. The fact that my mother was forced to keep so much from me… it makes learning the full truth all the more difficult. Maybe even impossible.”

His expression shifts from wounded to fierce. “You areyou. Not what they did, not what he says. And not even what happened to your mother. You get to decide who you are.”

“Except I have no say in what happened to my past, or how it forges my future.” I step back. The more I feel the weight of Lys’s words, the more I feel the terrifying pull of something new—something neither Harek nor my father understands.

And I don’t know how to explain that without shattering us both.

Instead, I turn away. “I need space.”

I walk away from him with heaviness pressing on every side. But I barely have time to process any of this before we reach the enclave and begin unraveling scrolls.

The last one crackles softly beneath my fingertips as we unseal it.

Einar leans close, brow furrowed, his voice low as we translate the fractured script word by word. Lys stands slightly behind, watching with unsettling patience.

Harek waits off to the side, clearly annoyed by being pushed to the side. Every time our gazes meet, we both look away. This new revelation about my mother has clearly put even more distance between us than before.

The scroll’s ink is unsurprisingly faded, but the message is clear.

The Pact of Binding

The wolves and witches, joined with the old blood of hunters, in defiance of the High Fae Lord of Courtsview. Power drawn from three lines. Strength sealed by shared oath.

A hunter born from unity to destroy tyranny.

I exhale slowly. “It was supposed to be shared. A mantle, passed willingly.”

“A rebellion forged in balance,” Einar agrees, tapping the next section.

But the text shifts as we read on.

Yet power gathered breeds fear. The witches wove a safeguard. The wolves demanded control.

The oath split. The sacrifice bound. One life feeds another. Blood roots deep.

The hunter’s rise demands death.

My stomach twists. “They corrupted it and turned unity into sacrifice.”

Lys’s voice is soft directly behind me. “Fear of losing power always births corruption.”

Einar’s jaw tightens as he reads further. “The witches feared the hunter might turn against them once the tyrant fell, and the wolves feared retaliation. So they locked the mantle into a blood-claim cycle.”

I nod, understanding. “The curse of parent and child fighting to the death.”

“And so it repeats,” Lys murmurs.

The final fragment seals it.

Only through severing lineage or death may the mantle pass.

Balance broken cannot restore itself.