The wind howled through the remnants of the Vale, a mournful cry sweeping across the desolate landscape. The once-living forest was nothing more than scorched earth and twisted roots. Smoke curled upward like the dying breath of something ancient.
Callum's arm never left my waist as we stood at the edge, both of us silent, staring at the crater where it had all ended or so we believed.
"I feel it too," he muttered.
My fingers tightened around his. Something's still there.
The child inside me stirred again. A flicker of light pulsed beneath my skin, weaker than before, but still alive. Still awake.
Do you think Lysandra knew this would happen? I asked.
Callum's jaw clenched. She knew more than she ever said.
A low, metallic click echoed from the woods behind us. We spun around Callum shifting half into his wolf form in an instant, his claws extending, teeth bared.
But what emerged from the treeline wasn't a threat.
It was a boy.
Barefoot. Thin. No older than ten, with hollow cheeks and eyes too old for his face. His skin shimmered faintly, like smoke not yet settled, and a faint greenish hue bled beneath his skin.
His eyes locked onto mine. "You broke the circle."
I swallowed. "Who are you?"
He tilted his head. A remnant. One of the forgotten.
Callum stepped forward, protective. From the Vale?
The boy nodded. "There were others like me. Souls bound in the roots. When the gate closed, some found peace." He looked down at his small hands, flexing his fingers. Some of us didn't.
A chill crept up my spine.
You're not human, I whispered.
No, he agreed. But I'm not the Shadow either.
"What are you then?"
He lifted his gaze again, and for a heartbeat, I saw something vast and ancient swimming beneath his eyes. "A warning."
Then he pointed behind us.
Smoke had begun to coil upward. Not just from the crater but through it. Black tendrils of shadow that weren't dissipating… they were gathering.
Callum growled low in his throat. "That's not possible. The ritual ended it."
The boy gave a sad, crooked smile. "You severed the heart, but you didn't kill the hunger. The Old Ones are waking."
My heart thudded painfully. "The gods he fed?"
He nodded. "One was trapped. But there are more. Beneath. Beneath everything."
The ground trembled, just faintly. Enough to make the dust stir at our feet.
Callum stepped in front of me. "We need to go."
But the boy didn't move. "You'll see me again," he said quietly. "When the earth screams, and the sky burns, and the wolves forget their names…"
"What?" I breathed.
But the moment the words left my mouth, the boy dissolved. Like smoke on the wind.
Gone.
We stared at the empty space for a long time.
Then Callum turned to me. "Let's go home. Whatever's coming… we'll face it together."
---
Two Weeks Later
The forest near Blackridge was blooming again. As if the death of the Vale had breathed life into the rest of the land.
Callum and I had returned to the pack. They welcomed us back like heroes though their gazes often drifted to my belly, where light sometimes flickered beneath my skin at night.
The elders tried to explain it away as magic, as legacy. But they didn't understand.
Something had changed in the child.
In me.
Sometimes I woke with strange dreams of voices whispering in the roots, of wolves with no faces, of gates that shouldn't be opened.
Callum never left my side. He slept curled around me like a shield, his instincts on edge.
He'd started having dreams too. Of a name he couldn't remember. A promise made in blood. A place buried beneath the sea.
We didn't speak of it often.
But we both knew
This wasn't over.
---
Far Below the Crater
Beneath the earth, beneath ash and ruin and bone, something moved.
A great, ancient root pulsed in the dark, green veins glowing softly through the soil.
A single eye massive, lidless, filled with swirling galaxies opened.
It remembered.
It hungered.
And it had just awakened.