The Wyrd Caves weren't just forbidden. They were forgotten swallowed by time, tucked deep into the jagged cliffs beyond the southern pines where maps refused to reach.
And yet, here I was.
Dragging a half-dead Alpha into cursed territory, trusting an echo of a whisper and the flicker of fading hope.
Kaelen was barely conscious. His weight slumped against my side, all sinew and heat and dying heartbeat. Every few minutes he muttered my name, or maybe his mother's I couldn't tell anymore.
The caves opened before us like the gaping mouth of a beast. No wind. No birdsong. Just the sound of my breath and his pain.
I whispered the first incantation.
The stone responded.
Old magic rippled through the moss-veined wall. Symbols lit up in faint green, crawling over the surface like veins.
"Blood of the Wyrd," I whispered. "Guide me."
The mouth of the cave split wider.
I stepped inside.
It was darker than I remembered.
Or maybe memory was kind to places that once terrified you.
A long time ago, witches used this place to bind dark knowledge. Everything too dangerous for the coven to touch was buried here. Sealed in ash. Forgotten by law.
But my grandmother... she taught me better. She said truth grows in the dark.
I laid Kaelen gently against a slab of rock etched with rusted runes. He groaned.
"Almost there," I whispered.
I lit a small flame in my palm, then scattered salt in a perfect circle around us. Protection.
Then I opened my bag. Pulled out the relic I'd stolen that morning from the High Library.
A bone scroll, sealed in wax. Smelled like fire and blood and old grief.
I cracked it open.
Dust flew.
The script inside wasn't in common tongue. It was Wyrdic a language only blood-sworn witches could read. Even then, it wasn't exact. Words shifted. Meaning bent.
But one line remained clear:
"Only the half-born may break the bind of fate."
It wasn't a name.
Not yet.
But it was enough.
A pulse echoed through the chamber. Not from Kaelen. Not from me.
Something had awakened.
"Who dares speak the old tongue?"
The voice was female. Hollow. Not alive.
I didn't flinch. "A daughter of the forgotten blood."
The stone rippled. A figure stepped from the shadows.
Or rather, formed from them.
She looked like me but older. Paler. Her hair was woven with bones. She carried the presence of a thousand untold tales.
"Why do you seek what should remain buried?" she asked.
I pointed to Kaelen. "Because he's dying. And the bond we carry is killing him."
She stepped closer. Looked at the rune still glowing faintly on his chest.
"You bear the curse."
"Yes."
"You mated him knowing?"
I hesitated. "The bond didn't ask. It just... was."
Her eyes softened for a fraction of a second. "Even the moon cannot outrun prophecy."
She reached down and pressed her palm to Kaelen's chest. The rune flared.
"He has less than thirty nights."
I already knew.
"I need to find the one they called the half-born," I said. "I need to know if she exists."
The witch studied me, then turned toward the inner wall of the cave.
From it, she pulled a shard of stone. It bled black smoke.
"This is all that remains of her truth," she said. "A memory. A warning."
She pressed the shard into my palm. It burned.
Images flooded my head visions, flashes.
A girl with silver eyes standing in moonlight. A circle of wolves bowing before her. Fire erupting from her hands. Screaming. A crown made of thorns.
And then darkness.
I gasped. The shard fell.
"She lives," I whispered.
"She hides," the shadow-witch corrected. "And she will not come willingly."
"But she's the key?"
"Yes. To save him. To break the curse. To end the war before it begins."
A war.
Of course there'd be a war.
Kaelen stirred. I rushed to his side.
He opened his eyes barely. "You found... something?"
"I found a path," I said, brushing the sweat from his brow. "It's not safe. But it's all we have."
His hand found mine.
"No more running, Sera," he murmured. "Whatever's coming... we face it. Together."
I nodded.
But deep in my bones, I felt it.
This was only the beginning.
As I helped him up, the shadow-witch stepped back into the stone. "The path will open only once," she said. "When it does, follow the moon's reflection, not the light."
Cryptic. As all things witch-born tended to be.
Kaelen groaned again, leaning heavily on me. The fire in his chest pulsed like a drumbeat, syncing with the cave's own thrum. I wondered if the mountain could feel his pain. If the land itself remembered curses carved in blood.
As we limped toward the mouth of the cave, I glanced once more at the bone scroll. The letters were fading. The spell within already spent.
But I'd gotten what I needed.
A direction.
A name to chase.
A war to prepare for.
And a prophecy that refused to be silenced.