Ashmere.
The name settled between them like a dagger laid on velvet—silent, gleaming, deadly.
Maddox stared at the space where the cloaked phantom had vanished, the memory of her bark-skin and void-like eyes still clinging to the air like the stink of brimstone. Selene—or rather Magdalene—stood motionless beside him, one palm still aglow with fading sigil-light.
The raven was gone. The scroll had burned. But its warning remained:
Ashmere.
"What did it mean?" Maddox demanded, eyes burning with his wolf's gleam. "You reacted like it mattered. Like it was personal."
Selene turned away, hiding the tremble in her fingers. "Because it is."
"Then speak," he snapped. "What is Ashmere?"
"A place," she answered, voice low and hollow. "Once. Now... it's a curse that walks."
Long ago, nestled deep within the Northern Wastes, Ashmere had been a crescent-moon stronghold—an ancient coven bound to nature and stars, where magic thrived wild and pure. Magdalene remembered it faintly from childhood, long before her world unraveled. She remembered gardens that bloomed under moonlight, wind-chimes that sang secrets, and women with eyes like galaxies.
And then... the fire.
The screams.
And a man cloaked in a king's fury, standing at the gates with blood on his sword.
The High Order had claimed the coven was harboring rebels. Maddox Vale's father had led the purge, cold and ruthless. He'd ordered the circle slaughtered. Ashmere had burned until not even the bones could speak.
Magdalene had survived.
Barely.
She never forgot.
And now... the curse of Ashmere had returned.
"I thought it was buried," she whispered to the night. "I thought they were all dead."
Maddox, silent for once, stepped beside her. "This woman... the one we saw—was she one of them?"
"No." Selene's brows knit. "Something worse. Something... corrupted. No witch survives that long unless they're bound to darker roots."
He studied her face. "You're not surprised they came here."
"They came for me," she said flatly. "But you were a bonus."
Maddox's jaw tightened. "Why?"
Her eyes flicked to his. "Because your name was written in ash long before I ever arrived."
-
Elsewhere in the Keep, whispers slithered.
The servants who cleaned the war corridor found symbols scratched into the stones, long and curling like vines, written in a language no one dared speak. The guards claimed to see shadows with no bodies moving between the trees just beyond the wall. Hounds howled through the night, but not in fear—in warning.
Something ancient had awakened. And it had crossed Maddox Vale's borders without setting off a single ward.
Selene sat by the hearth in her tower chamber that night, wide awake. She no longer trusted dreams.
With a flick of her hand, she summoned a flame from her palm and held it over the last unburned line of the prophecy. It glowed faintly under the heat, revealing a sigil drawn in invisible ink.
A wolf's crown, cracked down the middle.
And beneath it, in celestial runes:
He must bleed, or he will never remember what he is.
Her eyes burned. "Remember what, damn it?"
Down in the vaults, Maddox stood before the Crescent tomes.
He'd broken seals that hadn't been touched in a generation—scrolls forbidden, texts burned, names scrubbed from every known record. The High Order had deemed them dangerous, blasphemous. Yet now, as threats closed in and riddles piled like bodies, Maddox finally understood:
They weren't afraid of lies in those books.
They were afraid of truths too powerful to cage.
He flipped to a page marked with a sigil eerily similar to the one Selene had just uncovered.
A cracked wolf's crown.
The page spoke of an ancient bloodline—the Shadowborne Kings—wolves whose blood was forged not from moonlight, but from eclipse. Rare. Feared. Hidden in plain sight, their power could only awaken through sacrifice and betrayal.
And only one remained.
Maddox stared at the words.
A wolf without memory.
A king without a name.
A future written in fangs and fire.
"Am I...?"
A gust of wind tore through the vault, slamming the tome shut.
He did not open it again.
-
Two days passed.
The Keep bristled with tension. Every watchtower burned extra fire. Every soldier sharpened their blades in pairs. And Selene kept to the shadows of her tower, gathering what pieces she could—trying to stay ahead of the storm she had once intended to cause but now feared would consume them all.
On the third night, she received another visitor—not Maddox, not a raven, but someone she hadn't expected at all.
A child.
A small girl, no older than eight, with silver braids and a cloak too large for her shoulders. She stepped into Selene's chamber with no fear in her eyes.
"How did you get past the guards?" Selene asked, kneeling.
The girl smiled sweetly. "I told them I was sent by the moon."
Selene blinked. "What?"
The child reached into her cloak and pulled out a dried sprig of ashleaf, blackened at the edges. "He's coming," she whispered. "The one with no shadow."
"Who?"
But the girl was already fading—fading, not fleeing—her form unraveling like fog at dawn. And her last words floated through the chamber like the echo of a lullaby:
"If he remembers too late, he'll tear you apart."
That night, Maddox sent for Selene.
The great hall was empty, lit only by torchlight and the moon's pale glow bleeding through stained glass. He stood at the center, bare-chested, his chest scarred, his eyes restless.
Selene entered in silence.
"Why did you ask for me?" she said.
"I've remembered something," he said slowly. "A dream. Or maybe a memory."
She stepped closer, wary.
"I saw fire," he continued. "Wolves crying out. A boy locked in a stone circle, screaming as silver bled from his skin."
Selene froze.
She'd seen that vision in the raven's eyes.
"And a girl," Maddox said. "With eyes like night."
Selene opened her mouth—but no sound came.
"I think I knew you before," he said quietly. "But I don't know how."
Her chest rose sharply.
"You're starting to awaken," she murmured.
"Awaken to what?"
She stepped into the full light of the moon—and let her glamour fall for only a second. Just long enough.
Maddox gasped. His wolf surged against his skin.
Magdalene.
She looked just as she had when he was a boy.
When she had saved him from the circle. When she had bled for him.
"You—" he whispered.
But before he could say more, a thunderous crack shattered the stained-glass dome overhead.
A scream tore through the night.
From the outer walls.
Corwin's voice thundered across the Keep: "ASHMERE IS HERE!"
As the Keep shuddered under the first magical strike and a black storm gathered on the horizon, Maddox turned to Selene—his eyes wide with shock and the beginning of recognition…
"You're not just here for revenge," he whispered.
"You're here to stop me from becoming what I'm meant to be."