Chapter 68: The Frozen Temple

Scarlett’s POV

The mountain groaned beneath our feet like something alive.

Every step Kael and I took seemed to echo through the frozen halls, the sound bouncing off walls carved with forgotten symbols, moons, wolves, and eyes that watched even when I tried not to look back. The air was sharp enough to cut my lungs, but I couldn’t tell if it was the cold or fear that made me shiver.

We’d been walking for hours since the beacon fell silent. The world outside was chaos packs scattered, skies bleeding crimson but here, deep inside the Third Moon’s mountain, everything felt frozen in a different kind of stillness. Sacred. Wrong.

Kael’s torchlight flickered over the carvings as he murmured, “This place… it wasn’t built by wolves.”

I looked at him. “Then who built it?”

He didn’t answer right away. His hand brushed against the stone wall, tracing the outline of an ancient sigil a crescent carved inside a circle of teeth. “The ones who made the first bond. The ones even the Moon Goddess tried to forget.”

A chill crept through my bones that had nothing to do with the cold.

I wanted to speak, to ask more, but something about the silence pressed against my throat. The temple didn’t just feel old it felt awake.

The deeper we went, the more I felt him.

John.

His presence pulsed at the edge of my consciousness, like a heartbeat echoing from miles away. The bond had always been a whisper, sometimes pain, sometimes warmth but now it was louder, darker, threaded with something that didn’t belong to him.

“Kael…” I whispered. “He’s coming.”

He stopped mid-step, head snapping toward me. “How close?”

“Close enough to feel my blood react.”

He cursed under his breath and quickened his pace, torchlight swinging wildly. “Then we don’t have much time. The temple will open only once at the rise of the Third Moon. If he reaches it first, everything ends.”

I followed, my boots crunching over the frost-covered floor. “What happens when it opens?”

Kael hesitated, then said, “The Third Moon is not a moon at all. It’s a doorway. The first wolves called it Lunara’s Gate. It’s said to lead to the place where light and darkness were born.”

“And you think I can open it?”

He looked at me over his shoulder, eyes hard. “You don’t just open it, Scarlett. You are the key.”

The words hit me like a blow.

I wanted to argue, to deny it, but somewhere deep down, I already knew. The mark that had burned across my skin since the Blood Moon had changed. It pulsed faintly beneath my collarbone now, glowing whenever I drew too close to the symbols carved in the walls.

Whatever this place was, it recognized me.

As we entered the heart of the temple, the space widened into a vast circular chamber. The ceiling disappeared into shadows, and a frozen pool lay in the center, its surface smooth as glass. Beneath it, I could see shapes moving ghostly reflections that weren’t ours.

Kael stepped forward and knelt beside the ice. “The pool of mirrors,” he murmured. “This is where the Goddess sealed what she couldn’t destroy.”

“What did she seal?” I asked, my voice barely a whisper.

He looked up at me, eyes grim. “Her other half.”

The words echoed through me like thunder. The Moon Goddess had a counterpart? A reflection she’d hidden away?

Before I could speak again, the mark on my chest flared, and the ice beneath us cracked with a sound like shattering bones. A wave of light surged through the chamber, slamming into Kael and me. I fell backward, my torch flying from my hand.

And then I wasn’t in the temple anymore.

I was standing in a field of silver grass under a vast black sky. The air smelled like storms and memories. In the distance stood a woman, tall and radiant, her hair made of starlight and her skin glowing faintly gold.

The Moon Goddess.

But something was wrong. Her light was flickering, splitting like two forces were battling within her.

When she turned to me, I saw both sides of her face: one gentle and kind, the other shadowed, cold, filled with hunger.

“Scarlett,” she said, her voice like a thousand bells ringing in my skull. “You walk the same path I once did.”

“I don’t understand,” I whispered.

She stepped closer, eyes glowing. “I created the bond between wolves and the moon. But I wasn’t alone. The one you call the god beneath the darkness in John was once part of me. I cast him out, but he found a vessel. He found you both.”

The ground shook. The sky above cracked, showing glimpses of fire.

Her voice trembled. “When you pulled John back from death, you bridged what I separated. You gave the darkness a doorway.”

I felt tears sting my eyes. “Then tell me how to stop it.”

She reached out, touching my face. Her hand was warm, trembling. “You can’t destroy him without destroying yourself. You are bound through my mistake. But you can choose what survives.”

“Choose?”

“Light or shadow. Love or ruin.”

Before I could ask what she meant, the vision shattered, and I was back in the chamber.

Kael was shaking me, shouting my name. “Scarlett! The ice it’s breaking!”

I gasped, pulling in air that burned my lungs. The pool was no longer frozen. It had turned into a swirling vortex of light and darkness, the energy humming through the chamber like a heartbeat.

And within that vortex standing on the far side of the room was John.

He looked like a man half-reborn from fire. His veins glowed gold beneath his skin, his eyes bright and hollow. Every inch of him radiated power and pain.

The air between us crackled as our bond tightened, snapping taut like a rope on the edge of breaking.

“Scarlett,” he said, voice low, rough. “You shouldn’t have come here.”

I stood slowly, chest heaving. “Neither should you.”

For a moment, we just stared at each other, everything else fading away, the light, the god, the ruin. It was just us, bound by something neither of us asked for.

Then Kael moved.

He drew his blade, stepping between us. “Don’t listen to him. He’s not what he was.”

John’s eyes darkened. “You think I don’t know that?” He took a step forward, and the ground trembled. “But she’s the only thing keeping the darkness from consuming everything. If the gate opens, she dies.”

Kael’s voice was steel. “If it doesn’t open, we all die.”

The tension snapped like a storm breaking. The vortex flared, the mark on my chest blazed with light, and something ancient screamed from deep beneath the mountain.

The gate was opening whether we wanted it to or not.

I reached for Kael, for John, for anything solid, but the world erupted in blinding light.

When the light faded, I wasn’t sure where I was. The chamber was gone. The air was thinner, colder. I stood at the edge of a vast void, the Third Moon hanging above me like a wound in the sky.

Kael was nowhere to be seen.

John stood across from me, his eyes no longer gold but pure, burning white.

He whispered, almost tenderly, “Welcome to the other side, my Luna.”

And then the ground beneath us began to fall away.