Chapter 75 The Shattered Clock
The air in the palace corridors had turned thick, tasting of copper and old graves. Ronan didn’t just run; he became a blurred streak of gold and shadow, his boots cracking the marble tiles with every desperate stride. Behind him, Matthew’s lungs burned as he struggled to keep pace, his voice strained with disbelief.
"Ronan! Stop for a second!" Matthew shouted, dodging a frantic servant. "Can we actually trust that note? A messenger bird? It could be a trap to lure you away from the defenses!"
Ronan didn't slow. He didn't even look back. "I’ve questioned every alliance and every word since the day I took this crown, Matthew! But I will not gamble with her life on the off-chance that a Nosferatu is lying about the one thing they crave most!"
“Get her,” Fenrir’s voice was a jagged saw in Ronan’s mind, primal and panicked. “Get the mate first. Kill the liars later. If that moon bleeds before she is behind the sun-wards, we lose everything!”
Ronan skidded around a corner, his claws extending and leaving deep gouges in the mahogany paneling. "Matthew! Divert! Inform the High Commanders. Gather every pup, every elder, and every non-fighting shifter. Get them into the subterranean vaults immediately!"
"What about the frenzy?" Matthew asked, his face pale. "The Red Moon’s pull is too strong for the basement locks."
"Use the Aconite Shackles and the Lunar-Dampening Sigils!" Ronan commanded, his voice echoing like a crack of thunder. "Bind them if you must. No one—and I mean no one—is to be under the open sky tonight. Move!"
Matthew didn't argue further. He turned down the left hallway, his silhouette disappearing into the gloom as he headed for the barracks.
Ronan surged forward, his heart hammering a frantic rhythm against his ribs. Please, he prayed to a Goddess he rarely spoke to, let the calendar be right. Let the note be the lie.
He reached the heavy iron door leading to the underground tunnel. He burst through it, sprinting down the stone passage where the water still flowed in reverse. He could see it ahead—the blank stone wall where the green-haired witch had stood. He was yards away, his hand reaching out to find the shimmer of the hidden academy.
Then, the world tilted.
In a blink, Ronan wasn't at the wall. He was twenty yards back, standing near the entrance of the tunnel.
He froze, his breath catching. "What?"
He didn't waste time wondering. He lunged forward again, his speed tripled. He reached for the wall, his fingertips inches from the stone—and snap.
He was back at the entrance. Again.
"What the hell is going on!" Ronan roared, his voice bouncing off the damp walls. He ran a third time, pouring every ounce of his Lycan strength into his legs, but the result was the same. The distance between him and Elara had become an infinite loop.
“Spacetime anchors,” Fenrir snarled, his fur bristling in Ronan’s mind. “The witches? Or something worse? Something is keeping us out, Ronan. Something doesn't feel right. The air... it’s beginning to rot.”
Deep beneath the Silver Range, in a cavern where the sun had never touched the stone, the atmosphere was a literal nightmare.
The space was carved into a perfect, jagged octagon. Eight figures draped in robes of flayed skin stood in a circle, their bodies unnaturally thin, their skin the translucent grey of a drowned corpse. These were the High Priests of the Nosferu, and they were not breathing.
They stood around a raised altar of obsidian, their voices merging into a discordant, bone-chilling chant that vibrated through the earth itself.
"Sanguis stellarum, fati violator... Adducite lunam, scindite velum..."
In the center of the altar sat three bowls carved from the skulls of traitors. They were filled to the brim with viscous, steaming gore.
The first bowl held the heart-blood of a High Witch, still sparking with dying violet embers. The second held the dark, stagnant ichor of a Vampire Elder, thick and smelling of ancient dust. The third held the frothing, golden-red blood of an Alpha Wolf, harvested while the heart was still beating.
"Exhaurire lucem, bibere ruborem!" the priests hissed in unison.
One priest, his fingers elongated and tipped with jagged bone, dipped a brush made of human hair into the three bowls. He began to paint a massive, weeping eye on the cavern ceiling—the Eye of the Pale Mother. As the blood touched the stone, the cavern groaned.
The magic was gore-stained and heavy. It wasn't an invitation to the moon; it was a cosmic hook. They were reaching into the heavens and dragging the Red Moon out of its orbit, forcing it to ripen before its time.
Outside, high above the Lycan palace, the pale white moon began to shudder. A thin line of crimson, like a razor cut, appeared across its center. The stars around it began to wink out, smothered by a sudden, unnatural fog that smelled of iron.
Back in the tunnel, Ronan slammed his fist into the stone wall. The spacetime loop was holding firm, a magical barrier that refused to let him reach the hidden academy.
"Elara!" he screamed, his voice breaking.
He looked up at a small ventilation shaft that led to the surface. Through the iron grate, he saw it. The sky wasn't violet. It wasn't dark.
It was bleeding.
A deep, bruised red light began to spill into the tunnel, painting the reverse-flowing water the color of a fresh wound. The Forced Red Moon had begun.
Suddenly, a cold, wet wind swept through the passage. The loop snapped, but not because Ronan had broken it. It snapped because the ritual was complete.
The stone wall shimmered and faded, but the academy Elara had entered was gone. In its place was a scorched, empty courtyard, littered with the unconscious bodies of the Silver Coven witches.