The storm didn’t hit until morning.
Aria stood just beyond the outpost wall, staring at the sky as thunder cracked through the valley. The air smelled of wet pine and something ancient—something stirring.
Zara found her there, holding a folded letter.
“You’re not going to believe what Calia found.”
Zara raised a brow. “You say that like I still know what belief is.”
Aria handed it over without a word.
The parchment was thick, the ink faded. Wax seal broken—already read once. Zara scanned it, her mouth parting slowly.
“This is… Kael’s father?”
Aria nodded. “Written twenty-four years ago. Before Kael’s birth. Before mine.”
Zara glanced down again. “But it mentions you.”
It did. The letter, tucked deep in the witch’s archives and sealed beneath a forgetting spell, had been found by Calia that morning. She claimed it had “hummed” when she walked past. No one knew how it got there—or why it was addressed to a woman named Elira Vale.
Aria’s mother.
Zara lowered the parchment slowly. “He knew.”
“More than knew,” Aria said, voice low. “They planned it. My mother and his father.”
“Planned what?”
Aria took the letter back, fingers trembling. “To end the council. To unite two bloodlines that hadn’t mixed in a thousand years.”
Zara’s eyes widened. “You and Kael?”
“Were always fated,” Aria said. “But not by magic. By rebellion.”
She returned to her tent and stared at the disc. Its glyphs shimmered faintly, but now she wondered: had it always been guiding her toward this?
The letter revealed more than names—it referenced a prophecy buried in SilverCrest’s founding, one that spoke of a bloodline bound by storm and fire, meant to destroy the high council’s hold.
Her and Kael’s child—Elara—wasn’t just the product of a broken bond. She was the key they’d been trying to bury for a generation.
The council hadn’t feared Aria because of who she was.
They feared what she carried.
Later, Kael stood in the center of camp, arguing with Elias over patrol routes and rogue sightings, when Aria strode into the circle and tossed the letter at his feet.
He picked it up slowly.
Read it.
His jaw clenched.
“You knew?” she asked, voice ice.
“No.”
“But your father did.”
“Yes,” he said quietly. “And he died before he could tell me.”
“And so the council made sure no one else would,” Aria said. “Because if we knew our bloodline—if we knew what Elara is—they’d lose everything.”
Kael looked up, eyes haunted. “You think I would’ve cast you aside if I knew?”
“I think it doesn’t matter anymore,” she said. “What matters is this child. What she represents. What they’ll do to stop her.”
Zara stepped forward. “We move now. The underground sanctum Calia mentioned—it’s likely where they’re hiding the other child too. They’re gathering power, building a ritual that needs both.”
Aria nodded. “Then we take it from them.”
Elias folded his arms. “And what if this prophecy’s true? What if Elara is the storm?”
Aria’s voice was iron. “Then we make sure she never forgets who gave her the sky.”
That night, Calia returned with maps. Scrolls inked with the old sanctum’s layout—drawn by someone who once served Evelyn before vanishing into the wilds.
“It’s a maze,” she warned. “Layered with blood wards and memory traps.”
“I’ve broken worse,” Aria said.
Kael didn’t speak. He just watched her. Quiet. Calculating. As if seeing her again for the first time.
Later, when the others had gone, he approached her fire.
“I didn’t want this to be our legacy,” he said. “A war. A prophecy. Bloodlines and broken things.”
Aria poked at the fire. “We don’t get to choose what we inherit. Only what we pass on.”
He knelt beside her. “You were never just a mate to me.”
“I know,” she said. “I was a path you were too afraid to walk.”
Kael closed his eyes. “Not anymore.”
She didn’t answer.
But she didn’t move away either.
The next morning, they gathered beneath a moonless sky, ready to move.
Calia led the way.
The trees swallowed them fast—dense and damp, every step closer to the truth. Beneath her feet, Aria felt something pulse. As if the land itself was waking up.
And in her chest, a slow burn began.
Not rage.
Not fear.
But something older.
Like a wolf who’d finally heard her ancestor’s howl—and was ready to answer.
