Chapter 79 FIRESTORM WITHIN
The world returns to me in fragments.
Heat comes first.
Choking heat that ripples the air until it feels like the chamber itself is breathing. It coils around my skin, thick and relentless, smothering my thoughts beneath its weight.
Then sound.
Stone cracks. Earth groans. Voices rise for a moment before collapsing into silence as if swallowed by the dark.
Then light.
Light so blinding that I can no longer tell where my body ends and the fire begins. Every inch of me dissolves into radiance.
I am floating above the ruins of the ritual chamber.
Everything below is ash.
The obsidian altar lies melted into a pool of black glass. The walls have been carved open by my power. Torches have been snuffed out as though the night itself inhaled them. The priests lie scattered as nothing more than grey dust drifting through the air.
Lyra is gone.
Her panic lingers like a sour stain in the atmosphere. I can taste her terror as easily as breath.
I try to inhale.
Instead, I exhale silver fire.
Mist pours from my lips with each breath. My skin glimmers, almost transparent, with cracks of light racing beneath it like lightning trapped in flesh. My heart beats in two rhythms now. One is mine. The other belongs to Her.
The Goddess’s voice threads through the hollow spaces between my ribs.
Do you feel it, child.
The barrier weakens.
The moon answers your blood.
“I did not ask for this.” My voice trembles in the heat.
You bled.
The prophecy bends. The world shifts. You awaken.
A tremor ripples outward from the epicenter of my body. The earth shudders beneath what remains of the chamber.
A scream pierces through the dust.
Through the haze, through the collapsing stone, a figure staggers into the ruin.
Kael.
His clothes are torn. His breath is shallow. His eyes widen in a mixture of horror and awe.
“Selene.” His whisper cracks like something breaking inside him.
My wolf recoils.
The old bond twitches awake, faint and wounded, but still painfully real.
He looks up at me, suspended in a storm of silver fire that devours the room.
“Gods,” he breathes. “Selene, what have they done to you.”
I want to answer.
The words refuse to leave my throat.
Moonfire surges through me. A violent rush of power arches my spine, bursting from my back like wings cut from lightning.
Kael flinches but steps closer instead of retreating.
“Look at me.” His voice shakes. “Selene, fight it. You can.”
“I am trying.” My voice fractures. “Kael, I am losing myself.”
The Goddess roars inside my head, her voice like thunder tearing through bone.
He is nothing.
A shadow of regret.
A wound that taught you pain.
Leave him behind.
“No.” Tears burn trails through the light on my cheeks. “He is not nothing.”
Kael takes another step. His hand lifts, uncertain and trembling, yet reaching for me the way he once did in a different life.
The chamber groans under the pressure of my power.
My pulse spikes.
“Do not touch me.” I scream the warning, but he does not stop until the energy explodes outward.
He flies backward and crashes into a fallen pillar. Dust rises. Blood spills from the corner of his mouth as he struggles to rise.
“Selene” he gasps, breath shredded by pain. “Stop… before you…”
“I cannot.”
The words tear from me like thunder.
Light spirals from my body, a vortex of blinding wind. The ground lifts. Rocks orbit me. Dust swirls upward in choking spirals. The last of the ritual chamber collapses beneath the force of my power.
Kael shields himself with his arm. His voice strains through the chaos. “Selene, run. You are going to bring the entire mountain down.”
Run.
If I could stand, I would.
My body moves without thought, driven by instinct and by the Goddess’s rising command. A pillar of silver flame erupts beneath me and I am thrust upward, through stone and storm, out into the forest beyond.
Cold night air hits me like a slap.
Yet the forest does not look like the forest I know.
Every tree glows faintly.
Every shadow pulses like a living creature.
The moon overhead flickers, dimming as if its life is being drowned.
The Second Bleeding has begun.
Not only for me.
For the world.
My knees buckle as I drop to the ground. Moss and soil burn beneath my touch.
I clutch my chest. “Stop. Please. Stop.”
The Goddess snarls in my mind.
You cannot stop.
Your blood has opened the second seal.
The moon weakens.
I rise.
“No. Not like this.”
A howl breaks through the night.
Not Kael.
Not SilverMist.
Damien.
The sound slices through me like a blade to the spine. My heart crumples with so much emotion I cannot draw breath.
Shadow, my wolf whispers.
He is coming.
He felt everything.
He felt me break.
Leaves crackle behind me.
“Selene.”
His voice crashes into the clearing.
Damien bursts from the trees. His eyes are wild. His breath is ragged. Scratches cover his arms from running through the undergrowth. He freezes when he sees me.
The world freezes with him.
I must look like a creature torn from the moon. My eyes glow white. My skin splits with light. Silver blood drips from reopened wounds. My hair rises in a current of divine power. The ground burns beneath my feet.
“Gods.” His whisper fractures. “Selene.”
I stumble backward. “Do not touch me.”
But he steps closer anyway.
“I am not afraid of you.”
“You should be.” I push out a wave of energy that snaps whole trees in half.
He staggers but refuses to fall.
His gaze locks onto mine.
Not with fear.
Not with doubt.
With devotion.
“Come back to me,” he says.
My heart fractures.
The Goddess screams.
My wolf trembles.
“I cannot.” My voice breaks. “I am losing control.”
Damien reaches out, hand trembling with the desire to hold me even though touching me might kill him.
“Then let me help.”
Moonfire lashes outward, consuming the tree beside him. Ash rains down. He does not flinch.
“Damien, run.” I fall to my knees as another surge tears through my core.
He does not move.
He kneels in front of me.
His hands hover inches from my shoulders, shaking with the effort not to touch me.
“Selene.” His voice is raw. “Look at me.”
I lift my eyes to him.
He sees everything.
The agony.
The fear.
The divine storm devouring the girl he loves.
His voice breaks.
“Do not leave me. Not yet.”
Tears blur my vision. “I am not leaving.”
My body shudders. “I am changing.”
The moon wails overhead.
A sound only wolves hear.
A sound of loss and warning.
Damien’s breath stutters. “The Second Bleeding. Gods… it is happening.”
I nod as another tremor rips through me. “Damien, I do not know how long I can…”
A final pulse tears free, ripping through my spine.
My scream shatters the clearing.
Damien lunges forward.
The blast throws him into the trees.
My vision erupts in white.
The last thing I hear before collapsing into the burning forest floor is his broken voice, calling my name as though the sound alone could hold me to this world.