At the border, the ancient trees speak in secret tongues. Their words come as breezes, as creaking wood, and the twins feel eyes everywhere. Aralyn watches the figure ahead, his posture stiff as bone and his tattoos darker than shadows. Lyanna moves beside her, and the forest speaks again, whispering distrust and danger. Rhyven stands waiting, surrounded by suspicion and the scent of burned herbs. He meets Aralyn's gaze with unwelcome and unyielding presence, a reminder of the hostile land.
The wild landscape surrounds them. Bark shifts like scales on dragon skin, and whispers rise and fall with the wind. Lyanna casts a glance at Aralyn, her gray-violet eyes sharp. "Our reception seems colder than the rumors suggested," she murmurs. Her words are as light as breath, but the weight of the Veykari's hostility presses like a blade's edge.
"Are you surprised?" Aralyn's lips curve, but it's a bitter kind of amusement. "They hardly roll out the red carpet for blood like ours." Her hand rests near her waist beads, feeling the comfort of the concealed chain beneath. She watches Rhyven with molten amber eyes, the flash of violet almost daring him to come closer.
He doesn't. He waits, as still as a predator gauging the first move. Around him, the scent of herbs mixes with damp earth and ancient grudges.
A circle of eyes tightens as the twins approach. They are fierce, suspicious. Warriors with marks like Rhyven's—black swirls against earth-toned skin. These are his people, and the twins know they've entered a land where every branch, every leaf, and every breath of air belongs to them.
Aralyn breaks the silence first. "The Beastman Guardian, I presume?"
Rhyven's jaw sets with the grinding precision of rock. "They said you had fucking dragon blood. Didn't mention you'd be so delicate." His words are sharp as arrows, crude as ever, and the mocking edge cuts the air between them.
Lyanna's laugh is a soft ripple. "How sweet of them to think of us. And you, of course, waiting so... eagerly."
His eyes narrow, a forest fire smoldering. "The Howl of Anointment starts at moonrise. If you're still alive for it."
"We don't die easy." Aralyn's words are heat and promise. She steps closer, defiant against the wary gazes. Rhyven's presence is raw here, the Veykari's silent challenge.
A circle of warriors forms a tense perimeter. The twins feel it, the pull of danger and the lust for their defeat. Rhyven's stance shifts, irritation threading his features. "These are not your lands. Follow the rules, or end up as fucking prey."
"And if we pass the trials?" Aralyn presses.
His laugh is low, humorless. "They still might tear you apart." Despite the hostility, his eyes linger on her a moment too long, as if gauging the truth of her flame.
Lyanna brushes a loose coil of hair back, her grace as sharp as her sister's heat. "Then we'll try not to disappoint," she says, her voice a calculated edge. She studies Rhyven, watching how the light hits the markings on his arms.
Aralyn casts another glance around the gathering, noting the blood-colored sky as the sun sets behind dark branches. Rhyven's people draw closer, more eyes, more warriors. He signals for the twins to follow, leading them through the sacred clearing.
The scent of burning herbs thickens. Ceremonial bowls cast shadows like the souls of the damned. "For prey, we seem to have drawn an impressive audience," Aralyn mutters, her tone veined with sarcasm.
The space is marked with stone altars, ancient symbols alive in the dying light. Bone totems hang like ghosts, rattling soft songs of animosity. Everything feels poised, waiting for the bloodline daughters to be tested.
Rhyven stops near an altar and turns, arms crossed over his chest, tattoos like black veins against muscle. "Your lives are on you now. I don't care who your ancestors fucked. Pass the trials, or die trying."
The last light catches on Aralyn's face, a mix of shadow and fire. "And if we die, does it make you less of a failure?"
He snorts, a hint of savage humor breaking through. "Try not to die. It would be... inconvenient." But his eyes flash in a way that suggests more than just the inconvenience of dead guests.
Lyanna studies him, each word a piece of a larger game. "Would it?"
"Go find out," Rhyven snaps, and it's not clear if it's an order or a plea. He turns, his steps purposeful as if leaving them to their fate, but not without placing himself between the twins and the more aggressive Veykari.
Aralyn takes in the surroundings again, this time seeing it for what it truly is: a theater for their blood, their legacy, their gamble. She looks at Lyanna, fire meeting ice in a shared, unyielding resolve.
"They'll kill us if they can," Lyanna says, and for once her voice carries no shadow of a doubt.
"Let them try." Aralyn's eyes flash like storm-lit horizons. "We didn't come this far to turn back."
The moon climbs higher, painting the forest in silver and danger. The Veykari circle closes in, their presence a living wall. Aralyn breathes in the scent of herbs and hatred. "Are you ready?"
"Are you?" Lyanna's response is immediate, her challenge warm and familiar.
They step forward together, twins in defiance and blood, and prepare to face the trials.
The mist lies heavy as a corpse and curls through the grove like time, like memory, like old grief. It coats the ancient trees in ghostly shrouds and swallows sound. The shadows are thick, and Aralyn can barely see her own hands as she lifts the bitter brew to her lips.
Her tongue is ash, her throat burning as the liquid runs like poison. She tastes earth, blood, fear, the raw nerve of loss, and she drops the cup. Her vision swims, reality bending with it, and she hears the sound of beasts—no, the sound of her pulse thudding in her ears.
It's inside her, this madness, this mist, this trial. Aralyn spins as the world contorts, senses and instincts tangled like knotted rope. She feels the breath of the beasts on her skin, the heat of their bodies pressing close, and her chest is tight with an unfamiliar panic.
"Lyanna!" she cries out, the word stolen by fog and shifting shadows. A figure appears beyond the blur of trees, a familiar form dragged into darkness by unknown hands.
Aralyn's muscles surge, her body an explosion of rage and instinct. She launches toward the vision, but the distance is eternal. Beasts close in, their eyes glowing with hunger, with a lust for her fear. She fights through them, daggers slicing and flame erupting in bright arcs, but the ground beneath her twists and pulls her away from her sister.
She drives forward, each step cutting into her like betrayal. A shadow-wolf lunges for her throat; she sidesteps, fury and anguish merging, a force that burns through flesh and doubt. Her daggers are deadly, but the shadows seem to feed on her desperation, always more, always too many.
The illusion is smoke, insubstantial, elusive. Aralyn is fire, all heat and rage, and the more she pushes, the more the vision slips like water through her fingers.
Lyanna vanishes, reappears, drifts further into the abyss. Aralyn screams, and her voice becomes wildfire. Her fear combusts, consuming her. Flames ripple uncontrolled, and she sees the sacred grove scorched beneath the intensity of her power.
The elders chant louder, words like thorns, digging in. Reality is malleable here, their voices remind her, and every breath feels like drowning.
Rhyven stands at the edge, arms crossed but expression cracking. It was disdain. Now concern. He doesn't move, but the set of his jaw and the flicker of his eyes speak louder than any snarl.
Aralyn's vision blurs again, Lyanna dragged further, the gap between them a chasm. "LYANNA!" Her heart seizes, a vice-grip of terror that smothers like the mist. The fear crashes, tidal, drowning.
A realization cuts through. It's her fear. That's all it ever was.
She stops.
Stops running, stops fighting, lets it come. The fear that makes shadows, the shadows that she can't kill. Aralyn's breath is a jagged thing, but she doesn't move. Her eyes close, her fists unclench, and her flames gather instead of scatter.
Steady, controlled, unwavering.
The illusion falters. Then shatters. Then bleeds away into nothing.
Lyanna's absence no longer stings like a phantom limb, no longer echoes through her chest. Aralyn breathes deep. Her flames die to embers, and the grove fades back into focus, only mist and trees and silence.
Her knees hit the ground, her body exhausted but her spirit a blazing star.
Aralyn doesn't hear the Veykari leave. She doesn't see the mist part, the air clear. She sees only the image burned into her mind—of not losing, not losing, not losing Lyanna.
The forest is bright and brimming with eyes. Moonlight hangs like a spell, suspended in the stillness. Lyanna stands alone in the clearing, a lone piece on a forgotten board, the only movement her hair. It coils around her like vines, loose, wild, untamed. She doesn't flinch. Her gray-violet eyes are soft but stubborn, focused on the empty clearing and the watchers beyond.
The Veykari gather at the edges, faces shadowed by disbelief. They stand like ancient trees, each a sentinel of old magic and old blood. From behind them, their chief raises a hand, and the silence thickens, unnatural as this clearing.
Lyanna breathes in the cool night. The trial is simple: call a beast with nothing but her voice and her will. But she knows how these simple things grow teeth.
Her foot shifts against the dirt, a quiet rebellion against the stillness. She centers herself, rooted in place but reaching with her mind. She lets her eyes fall closed, cutting the world away.
The silence stretches, straining at the seams. The forest holds its breath. It waits. Lyanna waits longer, steady, undisturbed.
Rhyven watches from the fringe, arms crossed, his posture less tense but his expression unchanging. Around him, the Veykari begin to mutter. "She fails," a voice sneers. "An illusion of power," says another. They are wolves in the skins of men, waiting for blood.
Lyanna doesn't waver. Her jaw sets, firm and patient, but inside she knows there is only so much time before doubt becomes fate. She hears the whispers, feels the weight of suspicion, and her mouth curves into a smile that knows more than it says.
A chill sweeps through the air. The tension rises, an invisible tide. Her skin prickles with it, her senses taut, and the forest starts to turn. Slowly. Surely. Starts to turn toward her.
Minutes trickle by, and nothing happens. The eyes on her grow fierce, grow teeth, grow claws, and a young warrior with fire for hair grins a cruel, predatory grin.
Stillness builds like thunder. Pressure like water trapped behind dam walls. Like silence right before the storm.
Then, it breaks.
A magnificent golden stag bursts through the treeline, its antlers caught with starlight and its body a shimmering defiance of myth. The creature's entrance steals breath from every throat, stops every whisper, makes the silence and shatters it all at once.
The stag strides to Lyanna, poised and fearless, and bows its head. The Veykari draw sharp, collective breaths, the certainty of their mutters crumbling into shock. Into something more reverent.
Lyanna smiles again, not more, not less, but this time it shows her teeth.
Rhyven uncrosses his arms, his expression caught between revelation and some feral humor. The Veykari elders lean into one another, whispers threading a web through the clearing.
"Ancestral favor," says a voice near him.
"Vel'Saryn," says another, and his eyes widen like sudden explosions.
"The forgotten bloodline," says an old priest, his voice full of secrets and dread. "It is waking, and that always ends in blood."
Lyanna takes her time, soaking in every word, every shift in the wind, in the Veykari's eyes, in their mouths, in the entire night that now belongs to her. She reaches out to touch the creature, her fingers gentle on its antlers, and the elders can't conceal their gasps.
She passes the trial like the moon passes the sky, like nothing else could ever have happened. The stag steps away, as proud as when it came, and her eyes follow it until the forest swallows it back.
Rhyven looks after her, some part of him feral, some part of him seeing shadows that nobody else can. The certainty that nothing will ever be the same.
Lyanna turns from the clearing, the Veykari parting like water around her, their attitudes curiously deferential, and she goes to find Aralyn with the shockwaves of her triumph trailing behind her.
In the dim light, Aralyn watches Lyanna with steady eyes. The night softens around her sister like surrender, exhaustion draping her in gentler layers. But Aralyn doesn't soften. Doesn't surrender. She turns and stalks into the dark to find Rhyven. He's waiting. She knows. He's like a shadow. Like a secret. Like something she can't stop reaching for.
She moves through the camp, past eyes that follow her with fresh curiosity, through the hushed trails of Veykari voices. They're less hostile now, but Aralyn doesn't let her guard drop. The air is tight, stretched thin between victory and something more dangerous.
When she finds Rhyven, he's leaning against an ancient tree, tattoos like black rivers in the moonlight. His presence is a deep bass note that rumbles through her bones. Her approach is loud, and she knows he hears her, knows he knows, and his smirk is there before she even speaks.
"Answers. Now." Aralyn's words cut the night, raw and unfiltered, a blade with its own intent. Her eyes are molten, churning with questions.
He doesn't flinch. "Fuck, you're a stubborn one." His voice is the sound of the wild: low, feral, unbroken. "Isn't your sister the one with all the bloodline secrets?"
His refusal makes her seethe. Her hands twitch near her waist, a restless desire to take hold, to find control. "What did the priest mean?" she demands, heat and impatience driving each word. "You know something."
Rhyven's mouth twists into something that might be a smile, might be a snarl. "I know you're a pain in the ass." He pushes off the tree and closes the distance, an animal testing boundaries. His eyes flash in the dark, green-gold and defiant. "Wasn't Vel'Saryn enough of a fucking hint?"
Her laugh is short and sharp. "Veykari riddles? Cute. What are you afraid of?"
He runs a hand through his hair, a low growl escaping him. "I'm not afraid. I just don't waste breath on things you won't like."
"Try me."
Rhyven looks at her, really looks, and for a moment the distance between them feels less like a forest and more like a single breath. "Let it rest. It won't end well for you."
Aralyn steps forward, closing the gap and daring him to flinch, to move, to back down. "How do you know? What makes you so damn sure?"
"You don't quit, do you?" His voice holds something different now. Not quite a question. Not quite a challenge. "You'll get yourselves killed."
Her fire surges, refusing his warning. "You're such a coward," she says, and the words are more flame than sound.
Then she's on him, the heat between them violent and palpable. She shoves, and it feels like shoving the earth, the whole ancient weight of it. Her hands spark with anger and desire and confusion.
Rhyven catches her wrists. He spins them both, backs her hard against the tree, pinning her there with the strength of his body. Her breath comes fast, and his comes faster. He should let go. He doesn't.
His pupils slit to narrow points, dilating with instinct, with the proximity of her, with more than he cares to admit.
Aralyn's surprise lasts less than a heartbeat. The violet fades from her eyes and the flames dim, but they don't die out. She could break free. She doesn't. She pushes back against him, against the tree, against the hard knot forming inside her.
Neither of them speaks. Neither of them has to. The night is full of their heat, their breaths, their unspoken surrender. His grip loosens, but not enough for escape. Her flame subsides, but not enough for cooling. Not enough for either of them to pretend there is nothing more.
The distance between them vanishes. The night swells, a deep and dangerous pulse. Aralyn's lips part. His eyes drop. The space between, between, between, and—
The sound of a horn. A brutal cut of air. A bright and final burst of sound. A jarring reminder that they are not alone, that the ceremony calls.
They spring apart, unsteady, unwilling to face each other, unwilling to face what's happened and what's waiting for them. Rhyven doesn't look back, doesn't say another word. He turns and stalks away, a shadow without a claim.
Aralyn stands in the space where he was, hands fisting at her sides, her eyes twin fires. She watches him leave, watches her certainty splinter, and curses the blood that is always in her veins and the one time it wasn't on her mind.
Firelight splashes across the trees, lighting up the forest like a new dawn. Like a new world. The Veykari encircle the twins, their chants a wild music that burns as bright as the massive bonfire. Aralyn and Lyanna stand side by side, newly marked and newly bound. Defiant and fierce and ready for the rest of their lives.
The night pulses with energy. Drums beat like a heartbeat, like a war cry, like the stampede of wild creatures through the night. It thunders, echoes, weaves into the chants, making the entire forest sway in time.
Lyanna's eyes shine, bright and wide as starlit sky. "This is something," she breathes, voice just audible over the celebration. Her features are soft, exhaustion leaving her only long enough for this.
Aralyn's laugh is a flash of heat. "Almost makes up for their hospitality," she says, but her sarcasm is drowned out by the rhythm, her expression softer than her words.
At the edge of the firelight, warriors gather like wolves, and they are no longer waiting for blood. They howl. They cheer. They raise their weapons to the night.
The Veykari chief steps forward, his presence as immense as the fire itself. His arms are marked like Rhyven's, but his gaze is warmer, intense with something akin to admiration. "The trials are passed," he proclaims, voice cutting through the noise, "by blood and by spirit!"
His hands raise, and the chanting surges.
The Veykari close in, crowding the twins. Their faces are less severe, their hostility charred away by the fire and by what they've witnessed. Some wear expressions of open curiosity. Some wear caution like an old cloak.
"You've earned safe passage," the chief continues. "Bear the mark and travel without fear."
Warriors, hunters, priests surround the twins, intricate blue designs on their fingers. The paint is vivid, wet and cool on Aralyn's skin as they mark her forehead and palms. She watches with calculated interest, feeling the swirl of their attention.
Lyanna smiles as they adorn her, the blue a vivid contrast against her golden brown skin. "Travel without fear," she echoes, voice carrying to Aralyn, voice carrying to Rhyven, voice carrying to the whole damn forest. "They say it like they mean it."
The celebration is a bright and feral thing, unlike any the twins have known. Lyanna feels it through her skin, through her veins, through every thundering beat of her pulse. She feels the shift, the change, the surge in Veykari regard. They had been outsiders, but now they are something more. Something dangerous.
Rhyven stands apart, his silhouette a lone pillar against the bonfire. He watches Aralyn through the chaos, through the heat and the bodies and the night that doesn't want to end. His face is a mask, but his eyes betray the flicker of thoughts left unsaid.
The chief speaks again, louder, louder. "A gift for those who pass the Howl. A token of your trials. Of your blood. Of your bond."
The crowd parts, making space, making way for Aralyn and Lyanna. The chief's hands hold leather cords with small carved totems. The night seems to hold its breath.
"Stag for the caller," he says, and Lyanna accepts. The wood is smooth and light, delicate and intricate. Her fingers close around it like it's something she was always meant to have. She looks to Aralyn, sees the brightness of the fire reflected back at her.
"Phoenix for the flame," he says, and Aralyn takes the token with a steady hand. The carving is birdlike, but more. Mythic. It could burn the entire world and not turn to ash.
Their eyes meet. The gifts are heavy with meaning, with mystery, with more than any of them expected.
"Passage," says a voice near Rhyven. "What they've earned is far greater."
Rhyven doesn't flinch, doesn't acknowledge the words. His gaze stays on Aralyn, even as she and Lyanna become the center of a celebration that's almost too wild to hold. He sees something in the way they stand, the way the forest wraps itself around them. The way they belong even when they shouldn't.
It's the look of trouble. Of legend. Of warning. And he should be gone by now.
But he isn't.
He's walking toward them, through the mass of bodies, through the maze of sound, every step deliberate, unyielding, some part of him wanting this over, some part of him hoping it never ends.
His words are stiff. "You've earned passage through our lands." He doesn't pause, not quite, not long enough for anyone but Aralyn to notice. "Use it wisely."
Aralyn meets his eyes, molten and bright, the edges softening but never breaking. "Don't worry. It won't be wasted."
The space between them is less than before, more than before, everything at once. He looks at her like a forest on fire, and he knows what that means now.
Knows he should keep his distance.
Knows he can't.
The night blazes on, reckless, immortal. The twins hold their tokens, feeling the gravity of everything in their hands, around their necks, in their veins. The paint dries on their skin, swirls of blue like life, like blood, like promise.
The final ceremony burns through the hours, and the dawn sees them with marks on their skin and plans in their hearts. With Veykari blessings and beasts that guard their steps. With enough blood to last a lifetime. Or end one.
They leave as they came: together. Bound and unbound and eager for what comes next.