The campfires crackled low that night.
No drums. No stories.
Just breath.
And tension.
After the ambush, they had won the ridge — but it wasn't victory.
It was delay.
Caelina stood alone at the edge of camp, her sword unsheathed, blade plunged into the soil.
She didn't watch the stars.
She watched the smoke rise from her hands — tiny wisps of silver steam that only came when her blood shifted in grief.
Behind her, Tavian approached.
His steps were light. Still wolf. Still wary.
He stopped a few feet away.
"You haven't changed," he said.
"I have," Caelina replied without turning. "You just left before it happened."
A long silence stretched between them.
Only the wind spoke, brushing ash through the trees.
Then Tavian sat on a stone.
"You want to ask why. Why I left. Why I joined them. Why I betrayed her."
"Elara trusted you," Caelina said softly. "Zela cried for you. I buried you."
Tavian sighed. "I never meant to be your wound."
"But you became the kind that never scars."
He reached into his satchel and pulled out a piece of charcoal-metal armor — once part of Myra's ceremonial breastplate.
Caelina flinched.
"You carried that?"
"I stole it."
He tossed it into the fire. The flames flared green.
"I went east to kill her," Tavian said. "I believed she had corrupted our father. Twisted the clans. But when I reached the Vale… she was already dead."
Caelina's brows furrowed. "So why stay?"
Tavian looked up. His eyes glinted.
"Because what rose from her ashes was something worse. And I helped build it."
He explained it all.
How the Pureborn recruited him as a blood-right heir. How Miren was not just made from Myra's magic — but from fragments of Tavian's marrow, stolen when he was captured.
"She's part of me," Tavian whispered. "And I saw what they fed her: lies, pain, rituals that burned out mercy and called it purity."
"And you let it happen?"
"I tried to stop it. I tried to reach her. But she's more flame than flesh now."
Caelina's voice broke. "So why come back?"
Tavian stood.
Walked to her.
Laid his palm over hers.
"Because you are the only thing that ever made power look… clean.
And I remembered.
What it meant to be a wolf who guarded instead of ruled."
For a moment, the night softened.
She could smell the boy he once was.
The twin she never had.
The moon's forgotten son.
Then Zela burst into the clearing.
Her face grim.
"We have a problem."
They followed her to the east hill.
Where scouts had laid out a map of blackened bones—a message left by Miren.
A warning.
Carved in bone, the words read:
"Last chance to kneel.
Or the river cities burn with the next moon."
Zela looked at Caelina.
"The entire riverline? She's threatening five provinces."
"No," Caelina whispered, her fingers brushing over the bone letters.
"She's inviting us."
Tavian stepped beside her.
"I know where she's drawing her army now. The Flame Crucible — a crater city where the sky once fell. She's rebuilding it into a forge-temple."
Elara joined them, eyes hard. "Then that's where we end this."
Caelina didn't speak for a long time.
Then she touched her salt-moon blade, still glowing faintly.
And said:
"No more fires. No more offers.
We ride at dawn.
And we don't return until the world forgets her name."
Later, alone, Tavian sat by the flame.
He reached into his pack and pulled out an old wolf fang pendant — broken in half.
He stared at it.
Half of a bond.
"She's going to kill me," he murmured.
A voice answered from the shadows.
"You'll deserve it… if you hesitate."
It was Miren.
Standing just beyond the firelight.
Watching.
Smiling.