The Keep's war bells screamed across the valley.
Every inch of stone reverberated with the pulse of ancient magic as Ashmere's curse came knocking—not as ghost or whisper, but as an army cloaked in storm.
From the shattered stained-glass dome, Maddox watched black mist bleed across the night sky. Not cloud. Not fog. Spell-borne ether. The kind that gnawed through warded walls and fed on fear.
Below, sentries screamed. Wolves shifted mid-run. Sparks of wardfire flashed where ancient sigils met corrosive hexcraft. It wasn't a siege.
It was a reckoning.
And Ashmere had come to collect.
Selene—no, Magdalene—moved like a shadow in motion, already calling symbols to life with whispered incantations. Her fingers sliced through the air, weaving glowing threads that spiraled up into protective wards over the shattered glass.
Maddox turned to her, his voice sharp. "What are they?"
"Not soldiers," she said. "Echoes. The dead who refused to rest. Ashmere was supposed to be gone, but they've rebuilt something... or someone has raised them."
"Why now?"
She didn't answer. She didn't have to.
Because now, Maddox Vale had started to remember.
And that made him dangerous.
The Keep descended into chaos.
Corwin, bleeding from a gash across his shoulder, burst into the main hall.
"They slipped through the outer barrier," he gasped. "We held them at the east flank—until they spoke."
"Spoke?" Maddox asked.
"They whispered the names of our dead."
Selene's stomach twisted.
Necromantic chants.
She pushed forward. "Where are the surviving guards?"
"In the barracks. Trapped. Their minds are—"
A sudden shriek pierced the air. A low, warbling wail that made Maddox flinch and Selene's knees buckle. It wasn't sound. It was memory screaming. Maddox recognized it—
The exact cry he made as a child in the binding circle. The howl torn from a throat not meant for pain that pure.
Selene's eyes widened. "They're using your bloodline to manipulate the living."
Without waiting for a command, she stormed toward the tower stairs.
"Where are you going?" Maddox demanded.
"To the old sanctum," she called back. "There's a binding circle hidden beneath the south wing. If they're channeling blood-echoes, it must be there."
He started after her. "I'm coming with you."
Selene halted on the stairwell, eyes glowing faintly. "This isn't a battlefield for swords, Maddox."
"I wasn't holding one," he growled—and shifted.
It wasn't full, not yet. But his wolf surged under his skin, half-formed—silver streaks threading through his eyes and claws starting to sprout from his fingertips.
He was remembering how to be what he truly was.
The lower wing reeked of rot and buried power.
The sanctum door—a slab of obsidian etched with runes older than either of them—stood slightly ajar.
Inside: chaos.
The floor circle, cracked but still pulsing, glowed with violet fire. Bones arranged like spokes in a wheel surrounded its edge, and at its center floated a specter in a cloak of ash and shadow, face hidden by tendrils of smoke.
Selene whispered, "High Priestess Nyra."
Maddox stilled. "She was real?"
"She was death given form... and the last to bleed when Ashmere burned."
As they watched, the specter turned. Her voice didn't echo in the chamber—it unraveled it.
"The wolf returns… and brings the traitor with him."
Selene raised her hand, magic flaring. "Your war ended when the moon turned red. You lost."
The specter's laugh sent a crack through the nearest wall.
"Did we? Look what your silence bought you. A king who cannot remember, and a throne that belongs to ash."
Maddox stepped forward, ignoring the pressure on his chest, the way his heart twisted at her words. "What do you want?"
Nyra's head tilted.
"We want what was promised before the purge. Before your bloodline burned our grove. You wear a crown that belongs to death. And death has come to collect it."
Selene hissed, throwing a bolt of pure lunar light.
It struck the specter dead in the chest.
She vanished in smoke—but not before releasing one final incantation into the air.
The bones around the circle began to rattle.
Then lift.
Then move.
"Out!" Selene grabbed Maddox's arm. "She's summoned a revenant guard."
The skeletal soldiers—ash-marked, bone-armored—rose like puppets on invisible threads, their jaws clacking in rhythm with Nyra's fading chant.
Maddox reached for his beast. "We fight."
"No," she snapped. "We bind."
She dragged him toward the inner sanctum's alcove—where, carved into the floor beneath a hidden rug, was the Moon's Sigil. A sacred protection mark that had only one requirement:
Two bloodlines. One bond.
Selene sliced her palm. "Give me your hand!"
"What are you doing?"
"Trust me!"
The moment their blood mingled over the sigil, the circle flared to life, throwing the undead soldiers back in a blast of silver flame.
The Keep above shuddered.
The spell had cost her.
Selene collapsed against the pillar, her energy drained. Maddox caught her before she hit the ground, stunned.
"You—your blood worked with mine. That's not supposed to happen."
She looked up, eyes weak but defiant. "Because I'm not just a witch. And you're not just a wolf."
Back in the tower, under the fractured moonlight, Maddox laid Selene on her bed and sat by the fire, silent.
He had seen truth behind her illusions.
He had felt it in the power they'd shared.
And somewhere inside, beneath the lies and the rage and the half-formed memories... he recognized her.
Not just her face.
But her soul.
The little girl who'd pulled him from the circle all those years ago.
The one who had whispered: "You are not a monster."
The prophecy haunted him now.
"If he remembers too late, he'll tear you apart."
What if that was already happening?
Down in the hallways, Corwin patrolled what was left of the shattered outer barrier. The air had turned cold. Bitter. No trace of the ash-phantoms remained, but the damage was done.
They had tested the king's defenses—and found the cracks.
-
In the shadows, unseen, something moved.
A figure in a dark robe. Watching.
Holding a ring of bone.
He whispered, "The bond has begun. The king's blood is waking."
Beside him, a second figure—feminine, hooded, golden eyes glowing.
"She'll ruin him," she said softly. "But not before we use him."
As Maddox drifted into a restless sleep, the mark on his palm—where Selene's blood had touched him—began to burn. Symbols bloomed under his skin in glowing silver. The same symbols carved into the lost throne of Ashmere.
And beneath the Keep, the true king's tomb began to stir.