Chapter 83 BURDEN OF THE SHADOW
The world outside my chamber continues its routine. Wolves train in the yard. Councilors argue in hoarse whispers. Healers move through the corridors with arms full of herbs and jars. Everything remains painfully normal.
Inside my chamber, nothing feels normal at all.
Scrolls cover my table from edge to edge. Old ones. Forbidden ones. Runes written in blood or ink or something too ancient to name. They all say the same thing. They all whisper the same prophecy as if chanting in a language older than wolves themselves.
Shadow ends Flame.
Shadow must kill Flame.
Shadow must strike before the third bleeding.
I drag a hand down my face. The air feels too thin, as if the chamber is shrinking around me. The walls breathe with the shadows, and the shadows breathe with my heartbeat. I should leave this room. I should breathe real air. Yet I cannot take my eyes off the words that have tried to chain my entire bloodline to a predetermined end.
Selene.
My Selene.
The one fate expects me to place on an altar. The one prophecy paints as a catastrophe. The one I love in ways I never wanted to admit.
I slam my fist against the table. A crack splits the wood under my knuckles. It feels good to break something that is not already breaking me.
Footsteps pause outside my door.
Two sets.
Low whispers.
Garron and one of the elders.
“He has not left his chamber for days.” The elder’s voice trembles in the stillness.
“He is drowning,” Garron says quietly. “The prophecy would drown anyone.”
“But he is the Shadowborn. If he refuses to act—”
“Stop.” Garron’s tone sharpens. “He will hear you.”
I do hear them.
Every word is a stone dropped into a lake inside my chest.
I stand. My chair scrapes against the floor. The elder continues speaking, oblivious to the way my aura is tightening like a storm about to break.
“If the third bleeding comes before he ends her, the council will demand—”
I open the door sharply.
The elder falls silent at once.
“What will the council demand?” I ask softly.
Softness is always what frightens them most.
Garron steps between us. “Damien. You should sit. You are not yourself.”
“I am exactly myself.” I push past him, eyes fixed on the elder. “Say it.”
The elder swallows, throat bobbing like he is trying to swallow his own fear.
“They fear you will not kill her,” he whispers.
My breath leaves me in a harsh rush. A bitter laugh claws out of my throat.
“Kill her?” I repeat quietly. “Is that what you all want? A neat ending? A pretty death for the girl who only ever wanted to survive?”
The elder lowers his gaze. “If she reaches the third bleeding, Alpha, the realm may not survive her.”
“And you think I will survive losing her?” My voice cracks like dry bone. “You think I will stand over her body and call it leadership?”
He steps back. He should.
I shut the door on all of them.
My chamber feels too small. Too cold. Shadows crawl along the walls like living vines. I sit on the floor among the scrolls, surrounded by stories older than kingdoms. Each parchment is a sentence written long before Selene and I had breath.
One scroll in particular is stained with dark fingerprints. Its prophecy sits at the center like an accusation.
Flame reborn shall burn the bonds of mortal flesh.
Shadow’s hand alone may end her suffering.
My hands tremble. Not from fear, but from rage that sits in my chest like a second heart.
Mercy killing.
How can killing the woman who rebuilt my broken pieces ever be mercy?
I shove the scroll away.
“No,” I whisper. “I will not accept a future written by the dead.”
I reach for another scroll. This one was taken from the ruins of the southern temples. Its words are fragmented but clear enough.
Shadow may choose.
End the Flame or be consumed by her.
Consumed.
The word knocks the breath from my lungs.
If I do not kill her, I will die.
Not because she wants to harm me.
Because divinity does not bend for love.
My throat tightens. My heart aches with a pressure I cannot swallow down. Images rise unbidden.
Selene laughing softly when she first balanced the Moonfire.
Selene whispering my name with fear and hope intertwined.
Selene pressing her forehead to mine as if resting there kept her alive.
Selene kissing me as if she had only ever known the taste of ruin and I was the first promise she believed.
I press my palms to my eyes.
There is no version of this prophecy where I kill her.
There is no version where I watch her die.
The shadows inside my bones thrash for release, mirroring the storm in my chest.
A tremor shakes the castle walls.
Garron pounds on the door. “Damien! You need to come outside. The moon—something is happening!”
I do not answer.
I look up slowly… because my entire chamber is growing brighter.
Not with torchlight.
Not with lanternlight.
Moonlight.
Yet the moon is not full. It is not even half. Its pale glow spills across my stone floor, gathering in a silver pool.
My pulse stumbles.
The shadows recoil.
The air changes.
A howl rises through the forest. Deep. Resonant. Every wolf in Blackridge feels it. The realm feels it.
The moon is bleeding again.
The third bleeding.
My chest seizes. The prophecy is not waiting. It is unfolding now.
Selene.
I run.
Down corridors. Past warriors. Past healers who flinch from the way the shadows peel off my skin like smoke.
I reach her room.
Her door is cracked open.
She is sitting upright on the bed, clutching her chest. The healer stands frozen beside her, hands trembling over a bucket of herbs.
Selene’s eyes lift to mine.
They glow as if she caught a piece of the moon inside them.
“Damien,” she whispers.
Her voice is breathless. Shaking. Beautiful.
I cross the room in two strides and drop to my knees in front of her. I take her hands. Light pulses under her skin and runs into my palms like a heartbeat that does not belong to mortal flesh.
“You should be resting,” I say, though my voice is barely there.
“I felt the sky rip open,” she whispers. “Damien… something is coming.”
The bond snaps between us.
A pull tight enough to feel like a blade.
My vision swims. Her power rolls through me in a tidal wave.
Then the floor trembles.
Selene’s eyes widen.
Mine do too.
Because the moon outside the window sheds a single drop of silver light. It falls like a tear across the sky.
The third bleeding.
Pain lances through my chest.
Not from prophecy.
From the bond.
My legs give out.
I collapse forward, bracing myself on one hand. Shadows explode across the floor like shattered glass.
Selene cries out. “Damien… Damien, look at me—”
I try.
I cannot.
My vision burns white at the edges.
She reaches for me.
Our hands collide.
A bolt of heat leaps between us.
Her gasp echoes mine.
Her power floods my veins, overwhelming every barrier. It feels like drowning and breathing for the first time layered on top of each other.
The Goddess presses through the bond like a presence made of ice and hunger.
She whispers into my ear.
Her voice is the sound of stars dying.
“Shadow cannot outrun Flame. When she rises, you will kneel or you will break.”
The chamber shatters with the force of her words.
My body buckles.
Selene screams my name.
The world goes dark.