Ash drifted through the predawn haze like pale embers, whispering elegies over a field of the dead. The moon still swollen and red from the night's carnage hung low on the horizon, its bloody light pooling across scorched grass and splintered armor. What remained of Raina's army staggered through smoke-curled silence, searching for friends who would not rise again.
Raina stood at the center of it all.
Her sword dripped black blood; her free hand was slick with Lucien's. The rune-crown of her bond glowed along her throat, marking her as both shield and weapon. Each breath scraped her lungs raw, but she held herself tall, refusing to crumble when so many had already fallen.
Behind her, Maeva limped across rubble, cracked blade still clenched tight. Elias knelt beside a dying wolf-shifter, blue healing light pouring from his palms even as his own shoulders shook with exhaustion. Yet for once, none of them spoke. Every heart on that field waited for Raina's next move.
Because Lucien Alpha, lover, half-shadowed beast was kneeling, head bowed, breath shredding in his chest.
Raina dropped to her knees in front of him. "Lucien," she whispered, cupping his blood-splattered cheeks. "Look at me."
His eyes opened, dull at first, then sparking to life at her touch. "You're alive," he rasped, voice thick with relief.
"And you promised you wouldn't die." Tears stung her lashes. "Promises, Lucien Blackthorne."
He huffed a ragged laugh that cut her deeper than any blade. "I keep them… most of the time."
"Barely," she scolded and then broke into a smile that felt more like sobbing. She pressed their foreheads together, sharing breath, sharing what little strength she had left.
A low rumble rolled across the battlefield. At first it sounded like distant thunder, but Raina's mark flared with warning: this wasn't weather. The earth itself was stirring—something beneath the soil unfurling after centuries of sleep.
Maeva staggered closer, wiping soot from her eyes. "Feel that? The ground's hollow, like it's breathing."
Raina rose, helping Lucien to his feet as she scanned the ruined valley. "The Coven's curse was only one seal," she breathed. "There's another… deeper."
Elias approached, his coat charred, hands bright with lingering magic. "The Hall of Echoes," he said, voice hoarse. "Legend claimed the last gate was buried under the archives locked by blood older than nations."
Lucien straightened, wiping blood from his mouth. "Hall of Echoes? That's myth."
"Myth has been bleeding into truth since the first eclipse," Raina said. She turned to Maeva. "Can you rally whoever's left?"
Maeva's cracked blade lifted in salute. "If they have breath, they'll follow."
Elias gestured toward the crumbling walls of the estate in the distance. "Entrance is beneath the library. But the path is sealed by oath-runic locks. They open only for Huntress blood."
"Then I'll open them," Raina said, voice steady despite the quake in her bones. She glanced at Lucien. "Together."
He nodded. "Always.
That night they descended through the shattered library's hidden staircase torches guttering against damp stone, every step cutting them off from the world above. Spiral stairs corkscrewed downward, walls etched with runes that hummed like distant singing bowls. Ash peppered their hair and cloaks, falling from cracks overhead.
Maeva and three surviving Huntresses guarded the hall's mouth. Elias walked ahead, runic dagger drawn to sever lingering curses. Lucien and Raina followed, breathing each other's resolve.
Finally, a vast silver door awaited a single uninterrupted sheet of blackened moon-ore. Symbols of wolf and crescent were welded into its surface, pulsing like sleeping hearts.
"This is it," Elias whispered, throat tight.
Raina stepped forward. The mark across her collarbone blazed white-hot, reacting to the door's ancient call. She pressed her palm to the metal.
It hissed like drowning coals. Lines of silver fire spider-webbed outward, unlocking seals no living soul had felt unstitch in a thousand years. The slab slid aside with an earth-shaking groan, exhaling a breath of centuries-old air that smelled of dust… and something wilder.
They entered.
The chamber was colossal, ribbed with arching columns that vanished into darkness overhead. Along the walls, mirrored panels reflected not their bodies but their memories Lucien as a cub in chains, Maeva losing a sister to shadowbeasts, Elias swearing oaths he'd later betray.
At the Hall's heart lay a cracked circular dais, glowing faintly crimson. Runes bled along its edges with every step they took closer. Surrounding the dais, twelve warped mirrors stood like sentinels, each surface rippling with scenes of pain.
Raina's heart hammered. "Every fallen Huntress… every broken vow… all recorded here."
Lucien's grip on his sword tightened. "Then the final seal is forged from suffering."
A tremor rippled beneath their boots. The dais split down the middle, and from the red mist rose a figure cloaked in immortal shadow. Its form flickered one moment ancient warrior, next moment a monstrous eclipse of flame. When it spoke, its voice was legion.
"You were not meant to reach this tomb," it said, every syllable skittering like claws on glass. "Your line was to sleep until the moon burned black."
Raina raised her sword. "But we woke. And we are the flame you feared."
The entity's veil of fire parted revealing a face almost hers, but twisted with centuries of grief. Eyes molten, mouth ragged from unscreamed horrors. "I am the first," it hissed. "The Oathbearer. The one who made the pact that chained every daughter after."
Raina's hand trembled. "You're not a myth."
"I am your beginning. And unless you end me, I will be your end!"
The mirrors ignited, each showing a different demise: Raina slaughtering her allies, Lucien devoured by curse-flames, Maeva falling by friendly blade. Despair crashed in waves, trying to drown resolve.
Raina steadied herself. "Love is my anchor. Truth, my blade."
Lucien stepped beside her, golden eyes ablaze. "Fear doesn't live here anymore."
The entity roared, and hell broke loose.
Flame pillars burst from the floor. Shards of mirrored prophecy rained like knives. Raina darted between them, silver runes along her arms glowing bright enough to blind. Her sword sang against the entity's molten spear, sparks tearing constellations in the air.
Lucien shifted halfway wolf claws flashing, parrying each sweep that threatened Raina's blind side. Maeva unleashed lunar arcana, her cracked sword channeling pale lightning. Elias called up cyclones of raw air, deflecting shards aimed for exposed throats.
But the Oathbearer was vast.
Every wound they carved closed in an instant, sealed by memories of wars long past. Each time Raina slashed, she felt an echo inside her chest like she was carving at her own inception.
"You cannot kill your origin!" the entity thundered, slamming Raina backward with a wave of heat. Mirrors shattered into spectral dust. The ceiling rippled, threatening collapse. "Destroy me, and you unmake yourselves."
Raina crawled to her knees, coughing blood. Lucien shielded her body with his own as falling debris crashed around them.
"We need another way," Raina gasped.
Elias shouted over the chaos, "What binds her is what frees her! The pact's chains are written in your mark rewrite it!"
Raina's mind flashed back to The Threshold, to the crown she'd broken. She pressed trembling fingers to her glowing throat-runes.
"Love is my weapon," she whispered. "Lucien, your hand."
He clasped her outstretched palm bond mark to bond mark.
Power surged.
Silver fire burst from their joined hands, spiraled upward, and coiled around the Oathbearer like a living halo. The ancient entity screamed its flame veil blanching white, memories unraveling like ribbons.
Raina stood, weaving her free hand through runic signs older than language. "By moonblood and free will, I sever the chain that drags daughters to darkness. I keep the memory, but not the shackle."
Light shattered the ceiling, streaming from the night sky like meteors. It speared the Oathbearer. Shadows bled white. The spectral mirrors cracked, reflecting dawn instead of doom. One by one they burst, releasing trapped echoes to mingle with the roar of vanishing flames.
The Oathbearer's final cry was part triumph, part release: "Remember me… and be more."
Then it was gone pulverized into a single ember.
The ember floated forward, hovering before Raina.
She raised her sword's flat, collected that spark, pressed it to her chest.
White-hot light flared.
Lucien shouted her name, reaching
But the blaze consumed her.
The Rise of the Eternal Flame
When the light faded, she stood unburned.
Her eyes were no longer gold, brown, or even silver they were a rolling white flame, like twin phoenixes. Her black hair carried streaks of incandescent ember. The runes over her heart had fused into a sunburst. She radiated heat yet did not scorch.
Lucien approached slowly, reverent. "Raina?"
She turned, smile soft and terrifying. "I'm here… and so is she. We're one flame now."
He pressed his forehead to hers. Tears mingled with ash. "I felt you leave."
"I lit the darkness," she murmured, cupping his face. "And I came back brighter."
Maeva knelt, sword resting on knee. "Then our Huntress has become something else."
Elias stepped forward, awe widening his eyes. "The Eternal Flame… legend said if the first and last blood ever melded, a guardian beyond gods would rise."
Raina sheathed her sword. "Legends change. We write ours now."
But as triumphant silence settled, the ground shuddered once more. Far above, the moon flickered. An even darker shadow crept across its face.
Lucien's claws extended. "What is that?"
Raina lifted her gaze, white-fire eyes narrowing. "The final gate. The one beyond even this Hall."
She reached for Lucien's hand.
"Ready?"
He smiled a savage, devoted curve of lips. "With you? Always."
Together, they stepped through the shattered doorway into a dawn painted with blood and brilliance, toward a horizon where an ancient darkness waited to test the Eternal Flame.