The council chamber inside Bloodroot House was colder than usual. Not from temperature, but from the weight of expectation that pressed down on Aelira like invisible chains. Moonlight poured through the high stained glass windows, casting eerie violet hues across the floor. The coven's inner circle sat around a long crescent table, their gazes sharp and unmoving.
Aelira stood in the center.
Mother Vyra rose. Her voice, calm and deliberate, carried across the hall.
"Tonight, we test your loyalty. The forest is waking, and the old sigils are bleeding through the wards. You have seen them, haven't you? In your dreams?"
Aelira didn't flinch. "Yes."
A murmur ran through the circle. One of the older witches, Vanneth, narrowed her eyes. "You admit this so easily."
"I do," Aelira replied. Her voice didn't shake. "Because I know what I saw. And it wasn't madness."
Mother Vyra circled her slowly. "Then you know what must be done."
Aelira didn't answer. Her fists were clenched at her sides.
Vyra extended her hand. A scroll unrolled from her sleeve, floating midair. It glowed faintly with runes, some of which Aelira instinctively recognized. She hadn't been taught them.
She had remembered them.
"You will take this and go to the ruins in the northern glade. You will place this warding stone in the center of the broken altar. Alone."
Nessa, who had been seated at the back of the chamber, stood abruptly. "She can't go alone. That place is cursed."
Vyra turned to her with eyes like polished gold. "And yet she must."
Aelira stepped forward and took the scroll. Her fingers burned where they touched it.
---
Night fell like a shroud as Aelira stepped beyond the safety of the coven wards. The forest beyond Bloodroot was colder. Wilder. Like something older than time still stirred in its roots.
She clutched the scroll close and pressed forward, her boots crunching over dry leaves. The path narrowed, twisted. Owls called above her, and once she thought she saw something move just beyond the trees—too tall to be a deer, too silent to be human.
Her mark pulsed faintly beneath her glove.
Kaeln's voice echoed in her mind: "They sent others before you. None returned."
She reached the ruins just before midnight.
The altar stood like a wound in the ground. Blackened by fire, split down the center. Sigils were carved into its face—some scratched out, others glowing faintly. The wind whispered in an unfamiliar tongue.
She approached slowly, her breath visible in the chill. The scroll unraveled itself as she neared, and the stone floated from within it.
Her hands trembled. The stone pulsed in time with her heartbeat.
She placed it on the altar.
The world exploded.
---
A vision seared through her.
She was standing in the same clearing, but the trees were aflame. Witches in black robes chanted around her, holding burning torches. She was strapped to the altar. Kaeln stepped forward, his face torn between duty and horror.
"Forgive me," he whispered, just before the flames reached her.
The pain was real. The fire was real. She screamed—
---
She woke gasping, on her back, stars swirling above her.
The stone was gone. The scroll, burned to ash. But the sigils on the altar had changed. One glowed brighter than the rest.
The mark on her hand burned.
From the trees, a figure stepped forward. Not Kaeln. Not anyone she recognized.
A woman with gold eyes and a face Aelira had seen once in an ancient painting.
"Saelwyn," the woman said, voice dripping with venom. "You never learn."
Mother Vyra.
But not the Vyra she knew.
"You should have stayed dead."
---
Aelira tried to run, but her legs wouldn't move. The ground shifted beneath her. Roots coiled around her ankles, yanking her back. Vyra raised a hand, and the air thickened.
"You were always the cursed one," she hissed. "I knew you would return."
Magic roared to life inside Aelira, wild and untamed. She screamed, and the roots snapped like twigs. The altar cracked in half. Light poured from her skin, burning silver.
Vyra shielded her eyes. "No!"
But Aelira didn't stop.
She didn't know what she was doing, only that something deep inside her had woken—something angry. Something ancient.
When she opened her eyes again, the clearing was empty.
Vyra was gone.
And the altar… was whole.
---
She stumbled back to the edge of the coven wards before collapsing. Kaeln found her just before dawn, kneeling in frost.
"You're bleeding," he said, crouching beside her.
Aelira looked down. Her palms were raw, torn open over the sigil.
"She was there," she whispered. "Vyra. But not her. A different her."
Kaeln helped her up. "You awakened something. I felt it from the village. The wards trembled."
She met his gaze. "Then they know."
Kaeln nodded grimly. "They do."
The trees behind them creaked.
Aelira looked over her shoulder. In the clearing, the altar was glowing.
Not with light.
With blood.