Chapter 21 Chapter 21: The Ash of the Covenant
The Silence was the loudest thing I had ever heard.
It wasn't just the absence of sound; it was the absence of life. Solis-Vahl, the legendary Sun-Forge that had breathed heat into the world for a millennium, was now a hollow ribcage of blackened copper and frozen magma. The air was thin, tasting of ozone and the metallic tang of extinguished souls.
I lay in the center of the crater, my fingers clawing at the grey ash. My body felt light—terrifyingly light. The weight of the pregnancy, the constant thrum of the golden spark, the internal fire that had defined me for weeks... it was all gone. I felt like a hollowed-out tree, the heartwood carved out by a cruel hand.
“Would you like to hear him scream?”
The child’s voice still echoed in the marrow of my bones. I looked up, my vision blurred by a layer of frost.
They were gone. Elena, the sister who had been the shadow to my light, and the child—the entity with the obsidian face and Fenris’s silver eyes. They had vanished into the mountain, leaving behind a wake of absolute stillness.
"Fenris..." I rasped. My voice was a dry rattle.
I reached for the bond. I reached for that silver-amber tether that had been my anchor through the storm. I expected to find a void, a severed cord bleeding into the dark.
Instead, I found a ghost.
Far, far down in the depths of my consciousness, there was a pinprick of sensation. It wasn't a heartbeat. It wasn't a thought. It was a cold, jagged vibration of agony. It was the "scream" the child had promised. Fenris wasn't dead, but he was being used—his royal Lycan spirit was the fuel keeping the child’s obsidian form tethered to this plane of existence.
I pushed myself up. My muscles shrieked in protest. Without the Ancient fire to sustain me, I was just a girl again. A girl in a shredded gown, standing in the middle of a graveyard.
"Kaelen?" I called out, looking at the fallen smiths.
I found her near the base of the mural. Her bronze armor was cracked, and her sun-stone staff was a grey, lifeless stick. She was alive, but her amber eyes were dim, the light fading fast.
"You... let him... drink," she whispered, her blood staining the ash.
"I didn't let him," I said, kneeling beside her. "He took it. Elena took it. Kaelen, what is he? What did I give birth to?"
Kaelen let out a wet, rattling laugh. "You didn't give birth to a boy, Nina. You gave birth to the World-Eater. The prophecy... we read it wrong. We thought the Union would save us. We didn't realize the Union was the trigger."
She grabbed my wrist, her grip weak but desperate. "The child is the bridge between the Sun and the Void. Elena... she is the Moon that eclipses the Sun. Together, they are the End."
"I have to get Fenris back," I said, my voice hardening. "He’s inside the child. I can feel him."
"You cannot go after them as you are," Kaelen warned. "You are empty, Nina. A Vessel with no wine. To get him back, you must go where the fire was first stolen. You must go to the Root of the Moon."
"The Underworld?"
"The place where the first Lycan King and the first Ancient Queen made their pact," she whispered. Her eyes began to roll back. "Find the Cracked Crown. If you can reclaim the First Mother’s original fire, you might be able to... to reign him in."
Kaelen’s hand went limp. The last of the amber light flickered out of her eyes, and the Sun-Forge claimed its final smith.
I stood up, the wind howling through the shattered entrance of the cavern. I was alone in the dark, surrounded by the ghosts of my people and the echo of my husband’s pain.
I looked at my hands. They were covered in ash and Fenris’s dried blood. I didn't have the fire. I didn't have the King. I didn't even have my own child.
But as I looked at the dark tunnel leading out into the tundra, a new sensation began to stir. It wasn't the warm, golden glow of the Ancient Blood. It was a cold, sharp, and hungry determination.
If my sister wanted to be the Void, and my son wanted to be the Apocalypse, then let them. I had been a servant in the kitchens of the Blackwood pack. I had been a "nothing" for nineteen years. I knew how to survive on crumbs. I knew how to move through the shadows of more powerful people.
I picked up the shard of the ice-crystal the Frost-Collector had dropped. It was cold, pulsing with a faint, necrotic blue light. It was the only weapon I had left.
"I'm coming for you, Fenris," I whispered into the freezing dark. "And I don't care if I have to burn the world down to find the match."
I stepped out of the ruins of Solis-Vahl and into the white hell of the Tundra. The moon was high, bloated and unnatural, cast in a sickly shade of violet.
The masquerade was over. The trial was done. Now, the hunt began.