The dreams began with fire.
Not the kind that consumes flesh, but one that remembers—smoke curling into the shape of screams, heat that whispered names he didn't know but felt buried in his bones.
Maddox stood in a throne room long since swallowed by ruin. Columns cracked like ribs. Vines strangled broken stone. And at the center…
An obsidian throne carved with ancient sigils pulsed with living silver.
Each pulse echoed in his chest. Alive. Beckoning.
He stepped forward.
Then the dream changed.
The air thickened into a fog that sang with whispers—Traitor. Monster. King of Ash. Slayer of His Own.
He spun. The shadows around the throne writhed.
A figure emerged, cloaked in blood-red robes, face hidden behind a black iron mask. It raised one hand, and Maddox's chest split with pain, the glowing mark on his palm erupting into flame.
Then—he saw her.
Not Selene.
Not Magdalene.
But a girl with wild black curls and moon-pale eyes. Eyes that knew him.
"You promised me."
He tried to speak.
Tried to remember what it was he'd said.
Then the throne crumbled—and he fell into darkness.
He woke with a start.
Breath ragged. Shirt clinging to sweat-drenched skin. The mark on his palm still glowing faintly, as if the dream had followed him.
Moonlight poured through the window. The Keep was quiet now—recovered from the earlier attack—but that stillness was deceptive.
Something had changed.
He could feel it.
-
Selene stirred in the bed across the room, limbs tangled in silk sheets. She didn't speak, but her breathing shifted. Awake.
She always knew when he was watching.
Down in the lower levels, the damage from Nyra's summoning had been scrubbed away, but the lingering magic refused to fade. Selene walked the sanctum floor with bare feet, whispering detection spells, trying to trace the residue back to its source.
But it wasn't the circle that worried her.
It was Maddox.
Since their blood mingled in the Moon's Sigil, his aura had changed. Grown brighter. Wilder. More volatile. She could sense it, even when he masked it.
Which meant others could too.
The prophecy was unfolding faster than she planned.
And if she didn't gain his full trust soon, it would devour them both.
-
In the village beneath the Vale, whispers had begun to stir.
The blacksmith claimed he saw a ghost walk across the river.
The healer's potions spoiled overnight—her herbs turned to ash.
The children refused to go near the old well. Said a voice called to them from the bottom, promising crowns and crows and blood-red moons.
Fear spread like rot.
Even among wolves.
In the tavern, Corwin met with three trusted captains. All bore claw scars from the Ashmere purge. None trusted the sudden appearance of Selene Noir.
"She carries the stench of binding magic," growled Captain Ryker. "I've seen it before. No witch walks into a Keep without purpose."
"She saved the king," Corwin countered.
"Or cursed him," spat another.
Corwin didn't argue further. Because in truth, he wasn't sure.
Back in the war room, Maddox stared at the map of the Western Vale. Several territories remained silent too long. No ravens. No patrols. No merchant carts.
Something was swallowing the borders.
And it wasn't war in the traditional sense.
Selene entered without knocking, scrolls tucked under her arm. She wore a deep crimson cloak today—moon sigils faintly stitched into the lining. Her eyes found his mark immediately.
"Still burning?"
He nodded. "More in dreams."
Her face darkened. "The Hollow Throne is calling."
"You mean Ashmere's relic?"
"I mean the thing beneath it."
They descended into the catacombs beneath the Keep.
Few knew of the path. Fewer dared walk it.
Beneath the crypt of kings, past the oubliette, and through a wall of living moss carved with ward sigils older than the Vale itself, there lay a sealed door made of shadowsteel. It pulsed like a heart.
Selene held her palm to it.
The sigils flickered in response to her blood. The door moaned.
Maddox stepped beside her. "This is what called me?"
"Not what. Who."
He narrowed his gaze. "There's someone in there?"
She swallowed. "A part of you."
Before he could ask more, the door cracked open.
Not wide. Just enough for the smell of old blood and frozen earth to seep through.
And then Maddox heard it.
"Maddox…"
His name, spoken like a lullaby and a curse.
He turned to Selene. "That's her voice. The girl from my dreams."
Selene froze.
"I don't understand—who is she?"
She looked away. "The one you were supposed to kill."
Back in her chambers that night, Selene paced the floor.
The blood bond had awakened things neither of them were ready for. The girl in his dreams—Liora—was more than a memory.
She was the truth Selene had buried when she first crafted the Magdalene identity. The reason she took on the Noir persona. The heart of her revenge.
But Maddox wasn't the only one being watched.
-
Far from the Keep, in the ruins of Ashmere's former temple, a gathering had begun.
Witches. Shades. Exiled wolves.
And at their center, cloaked in ivory, the hooded woman from the cliff returned.
She raised a black orb and held it aloft.
"The king is waking. The curse has begun. And the Moon's Bond has been formed."
A second figure stepped forward. He wore armor carved with bone, his eyes gold-rimmed with hate.
"Then it's time to open the Hollow Throne… and let the First Blood rise."
That night, as Maddox stared out the tower window, a mark appeared in the sky—three moons aligned in a triangle, pulsing red. It hadn't been seen in five hundred years. It meant only one thing…
The Waking Moon had begun.