Chapter 170 Hundred and seventy three

Chapter 170 Hundred and seventy three
“Ryder, get up,” Sienna whispered urgently, her hands sliding beneath his arms as she tried to pull him onto his feet. “We can’t stay here.”

“I’m trying,” he muttered, his voice weak but determined, forcing his legs beneath him even as they trembled like they no longer belonged to him. “Just… give me a second.”

“We don’t have a second.” She glanced over her shoulder, heart pounding so hard she felt the beat in her teeth. The place where Lunaris had vanished still crackled with residual light, like the very air feared to settle. “She’ll come back. Or worse, something she sent will.”

Ryder exhaled a shaky breath, gripping her shoulder not because he needed balance but because he needed her closeness. “Where are we going?”

“The old Moon Temple,” she said without hesitation. “It’s the only place she won’t destroy outright. She still needs what’s buried beneath it.”

Ryder huffed a laugh as they stumbled into the tree line, his arm slung over her shoulders. “You mean that ruin you dragged me to when we were kids? The one that collapsed when I stepped on one cracked stone?”

“You were dramatic even then.”

“I was twelve.”

“And still dramatic.”

He tried to smile, but pain cracked through his face, forcing him to swallow a sound that wasn’t quite human. Sienna tightened her grip on him, steadying his steps as they pushed deeper into the forest. Moonlight flickered through the branches like broken glass, illuminating the shadow mark carved across his chest with eerie clarity.

She hated it. Hated seeing it. Hated knowing she couldn’t rip it off him even if she tore her own skin open.

“You’re thinking too loudly,” Ryder murmured, leaning heavily on her. “I can feel it.”

“No, you can’t.”

“I can,” he insisted softly. “Your fear feels like cold hands around my ribs.”

“Then stop fading,” she snapped, voice cracking mid-word.

“Believe me,” he breathed, “I’m working on it.”

Branches scraped across their clothes as they reached the bank of a dry riverbed. Ryder stumbled again, and Sienna pressed a hand to his chest instinctively. The shadow mark pulsed beneath her palm, cold and too alive.

He hissed through his teeth. “Don’t touch it. It reacts to you.”

“I know,” she murmured, withdrawing her hand but not her stare. “That’s why I keep touching it.”

“That’s reckless.”

“That’s love,” she countered.

Ryder went silent at that, the shadows under his eyes deepening. For a moment, he didn’t look like a fading man. He looked like the boy she remembered, bright-eyed, fierce, loyal to a fault. She missed that version of him so much she felt it like a physical ache.

They reached the slope leading to the ruins, where stone pillars jutted from the earth like ribs from a long-buried giant. Vines draped over broken arches, moonlight dripping across the shattered floor in silver fragments. Time had eaten the temple slowly, hungrily, but even now it hummed with something ancient beneath the rubble.

Ryder paused at the threshold, breath fogging in the cold air. “I didn’t think we’d ever come back here.”

“We didn’t have a choice,” she said, guiding him toward the collapsed doorway. “The goddess marked this place the same night she cursed your bloodline. She sealed something here. Something powerful enough that she won’t risk destroying it.”

“So we’re hiding under her nose.”

“She won’t look for us in a place that remembers her betrayals.”

Ryder winced as another tremor ran through him. “You sound like the High Priestess.”

“Do not insult me.”

He managed a faint grin as she helped him step over the cracked threshold. Inside, the once-grand hall lay in ruins. Fallen pillars littered the floor. The mural across the far wall, the one depicting Lunaris creating the first wolves, was cracked straight through the goddess’s face.

Sienna curled her fingers into fists. “Good.”

Ryder’s legs buckled unexpectedly, and she barely caught him in time. “Easy,” she whispered, lowering him onto a flat stone. “Breathe slowly.”

“Sienna…” he rasped.

“What?”

He lifted a trembling hand to her cheek, brushing his thumb along her jaw. “If I fade while you’re touching me… you’ll feel it.”

“Then I’ll hold on harder.” She pressed her forehead to his. “You’re not going anywhere.”

“You don’t know that,” he whispered. “She said, ”

“I don’t care what she said.”

“She never lies.”

“She also never wins.”

Ryder let out a soft, broken laugh. “You’re impossible.”

“And you’re stubborn.” She traced the edge of his jaw, memorizing it with her fingertips. “We make sense.”

He closed his eyes, breathing her in. “Sienna… something’s wrong.”

Her pulse jumped. “What do you mean?”

“I feel…” He swallowed hard, gripping the stone beneath him with white knuckles. “Something under us. Like the temple is breathing.”

Sienna froze.

“I thought it was just me fading,” Ryder continued, voice shaking. “But no. There’s something alive here.”

Sienna stood, scanning the shadows. No wind stirred the hanging vines. No sound carried from outside. Only the steady, low heartbeat of magic thrummed beneath her feet.

“It’s the pulse,” she whispered.

“What pulse?”

“The one the Priestess told me about. The heartbeat buried under these stones. The same power that sealed the first prophecy.”

Ryder’s breath hitched. “And it’s awake?”

“Lunaris marked us both,” Sienna said slowly. “Maybe… maybe that’s why.”

Ryder leaned back against the stone, chest rising unevenly. “So we’re sitting on an ancient heart that might decide to swallow us whole.”

“More dramatic than twelve-year-old you.”

He groaned. “You’re enjoying this.”

“Only a little.”

She moved toward the center of the hall, where a circle had once been carved into the floor. Most of it was cracked, but the faint glow of old runes shimmered when the moonlight touched them. Her mark ignited at the same time, silver spreading under her skin like wildfire.

Ryder saw it from across the hall and pushed himself upright. “Sienna, your wrist, ”

“I know,” she murmured.

“That isn’t normal.”

“Define normal.”

“I’m fading, you’re glowing, the ground is beating like a living heart, take your pick.”

She turned back to face him. “Ryder, this place is reacting to us. To our marks. To the prophecy.”

He blinked slowly, a shadow passing behind his pupils. “I don’t want to hear the word prophecy tonight.”

“You might not have a choice.”

“Sienna, ”

His words cut off.

A tremor rippled beneath them, knocking dust from the broken rafters. The glow in the runes intensified, spilling silver light through every crack in the floor. The heartbeat grew loud enough to feel in the air, a slow, powerful thrum that shook loose fragments of stone from the walls.

“Sienna,” Ryder whispered harshly, “get away from the center.”

“No,” she said, stepping closer.

“Yes,” he snapped, staggering to his feet despite the agony twisting through him. “If that thing reacts to your mark, it might, ”

“Do something we need.”

“Or kill you.”

“Or save you.”

Ryder clenched his jaw as another wave of pain slammed into him, making the shadows under his skin pulse violently. “Sienna…”

She met his eyes.

He stopped arguing.

Because the glow beneath her feet shifted, tightened, focused, until the pulse wasn’t under the temple anymore.

It was under her.

The air thickened.

The moonlight sharpened.

Ryder reached for her just as a beam of silver light erupted from the floor beneath her, swallowing her in blinding radiance.

“Sienna!” he shouted, stumbling forward.

She saw his silhouette rush toward her, every line of him desperate, furious, terrified.

She lifted her hand toward him.

The light thickened.

The heartbeat roared.

The ground split.

Ryder’s fingers brushed hers,

And the temple swallowed her whole.