Chapter 107
Chapter 107
*Nathaniel*
The path to the Shrine wasn’t marked.
No signs. No carved runes. No whispers in the stone like the leylines that had guided me for weeks. Just silence. Not the dead kind, either–but the ancient kind. The kind that made the forest hush and the wind fold in on itself. The kind that said, go back even as the air pulled you forward.
We went anyway.
The four of us moved as one–Ethan at my side, silent but sharp–eyed. Eva just behind, her fingers occasionally brushing the edges of the pack that held Bastain’s scrolls. And Maximus Laker… somewhere to my left, close enough to be a shadow, far enough that I never forgot the distance we’d earned between us.
No one spoke as we crossed the final ridge and saw it.
The Shrine of the White Wolf.
A ruin, technically–but even time hadn’t dared to bring it to its knees. The stones were cracked but upright, stacked in tight, ritualistic arcs that formed a wide half–moon shape around a central pedestal. Moss crawled along the seams like old scars, and the air buzzed faintly with latent magic. Something had happened here. Something huge. Something sacred. We approached slowly, reverently. The stones didn’t shimmer or whisper, but I felt the weight of them settle into my spine the closer we got.
“This is it,” Eva whispered. “The place from my vision.”
Maximus crouched beside the pedestal. His fingers traced a set of grooves carved deep into the base. They were worn nearly smooth, but not enough to erase their meaning.
“A blade was driven here,” he murmured. “Again and again.”
“Ritual sacrifice,” Ethan said. “Old magic.”
I moved toward the center.
There was a symbol etched into the stone floor–faint, half–buried beneath moss and time, but still burning with memory.
A circle of fire.
Inside it, two names written in blood–script.
One erased. The other glowing faintly, like the name itself refused to be forgotten.
“Do you see that?” I asked.
Eva stepped beside me. “Yes. It’s… it’s a signature.”
She squinted, then gasped. “It’s her. The first Ethereal. The flame–bearer from the myth.”
The symbol pulsed underfoot.
I dropped to one knee and brushed aside the moss covering the final line of the inscription. It wasn’t a name.
It was a promise.
I burn, and he breaks. That the realms remain sealed.
I stared at it, reading the line again, slower this time.
I burn, and he breaks…
“Bastain was right,” I muttered. “There was a pact.”
Maximus stood and crossed to the opposite arch. “She didn’t just sacrifice power. She sacrificed her mate”
“Willingly?” Ethan asked.
Maximus’s voice was low. “Does it matter?”
The wind stirred around us.
I stood slowly, the air thick now, heavy with the pressure of something long buried, something no longer content to sleep. “She did it to protect the veil between realms,” Eva said. “To stop something worse from coming through.”
“No,” I said. “To stop herself from becoming the thing that destroyed it.”
Everyone fell silent.
I didn’t want to say what I was thinking. I didn’t want to feel the truth forming in the pit of my chest like a second heartbeat. But it was already there.
This prophecy–it had never really been about Kaed using Jiselle
It had been about Jiselle becoming someone–something no one could stop
And if she reached the point where the fire inside her no longer burned for something, but instead simply bored, then maybe…
Maybe I wouldn’t be enough.
The thought made me physically ill.
I moved away from the center, needing distance, needing breath.
The forest beyond the shrine was quiet, Still. And Maximus stepped up beside me, as if the silence had called Kim too.
He didn’t speak for a moment.
When he did, it wasn’t soft.
“If she tips too far,” he said, “I’ll end it.”
I didn’t look at him.
“Even if it kills me,” he added.
I closed my eyes. “Don’t.”
“You know I’m not saying it because I want to.”
“I know,” I said. “But I don’t want to hear it anyway”
He was quiet, then asked, “Do you believe you can bring her back?”
“I have to,”
“That’s not an answer.”
I turned to him, the distance between us crackling like dry leaves underfoot.
“She’s not just power to me, Maximus. She’s not prophecy. She’s Jiselle. And even if she forgets, even if they strip every part of her down to ash, I’ll still know her. I’ll still find her.”
He held my gaze. “And if she becomes the thing that cracks the realms open?”
“I stand between her and the world.”
“And if she won’t let you?”
My voice came out quieter than I meant it to. “Then you do what you have to. After I fail.”
He nodded once. And that was the truest form of understanding we’d ever had.
Not trust.
But necessity.
Behind us, Ethan called out. “There’s more.”
We turned and returned to the pedestal. Eva had uncovered a second inscription on the inner ring–one meant to be read only when the first vow had been made.
If the flame rises again, the Veilborn must fall, or the stars shall burn red.
Maximus’s eyes
narrowed.
“It’s not just a prophecy,” I said. “It’s a design. A cycle.”
Eva’s fingers trembled on the edge of the stone. “A design that ends in blood.”
We left the shrine before sunset. We didn’t speak of what we’d found. We didn’t need to.
But I knew, as the wind shifted behind us and the leyline pulled again toward the east-
We were running out of time.
We left the shrine before sunset. No one said a word for a long time. The weight of the past–of blood–de
ucts and
names lost to fire–pressed on our shoulders like invisible chains. We weren’t walking out with clarity. We were walking out with consequences.
I glanced once over my shoulder as we crossed the ridge. The stone arches stood silent, but something lingered beneath them. A pulse. A watching.
I didn’t know if it was memory or magic.
But I knew it had teeth.
And I knew it was waiting.
Because somewhere ahead, Jiselle was choosing her path.
2/3
Chapter 107
And we were choosing whether to follow….
or to stop her.
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