We left the Seers' sanctum before the first light of dawn kissed the peaks. The cold was sharp enough to bite through fur, but it was not the chill that haunted me. It was the vision in Aria's eyes—a vision of the Queen rising. The Cage cracking. The end slithering close like a serpent in the dark.
My warriors moved in silence. No war chants. No howls. Just the crunch of boots and paws over frost-kissed earth. The eastern pass loomed ahead, a narrow path carved between cliffs of jagged stone. Rhys led the way, though his limp worsened with each step. I told him to fall back, but he refused. He always did.
Aria kept to my right, her face pale but resolved. The touch of the Heart Ice had changed her. There was more certainty in her gaze now. A quiet fury. Whatever she had seen, it had set her path in stone. She no longer doubted her role in this war.
We reached the Blood Forest by dusk. The trees here bled sap the color of rust. Their trunks were twisted, their branches bare like skeletal arms reaching toward a dying sky. The scent was thick—metallic, old, and cruel. Even the animals had fled. No birds. No wolves. No life.
This place remembered death.
Rhys growled low. "It stinks of her."
He was right. The Queen had been here. Her power clung to the air like rot.
"Set up a perimeter," I ordered. "No fires. We move again before the moon is high."
We camped in a hollow beneath a rock ledge, our backs to stone and our eyes to the trees. The shadows shifted too easily. I did not trust them. Neither did the others. Every sound, every creak of bark or sigh of wind had us reaching for blades.
Aria sat close to me, her knees drawn up, eyes watching the dark. "I can feel her," she whispered. "She's close. Too close."
"Then we strike before she's ready."
Aria turned to me. "What if I lose control again? What if the fire turns on us?"
I reached out, brushing a strand of hair from her face. "Then I burn with you. But we will not run. Not now."
She looked away, but I saw her mouth the words: I won't let you.
The forest groaned. A deep, low rumble that seemed to rise from the ground itself. We all stood. Swords drawn. Eyes sharp.
Then the Queen arrived.
Not in form. In presence. The trees split apart, bending backward as if bowing to a monarch. From the gap emerged a figure cloaked in shadow, taller than any of us, her eyes glowing like molten gold.
But it was not the Queen. Not yet.
It was one of her daughters.
She smiled, baring fangs. "Alpha."
I stepped forward. "You're not welcome here."
"And yet, here I am. The Queen sends her regards. She invites you to kneel before the end."
I lifted my blade. "She should send a better messenger."
The creature lunged.
We fought beneath trees older than memory. Steel against claws. Fire against shadow. Aria's flames burst like a sunrise, swallowing darkness, burning through the creature's flesh. My pack tore into the others that emerged from the trees—twisted vampires, fanged and frenzied, their eyes wild with hunger.
Blood painted the bark. Screams shook the leaves. But we held.
Aria burned like a star. Her magic seared a path through the enemy, but it also frightened me. It had grown wild. Unruly. For every enemy she incinerated, the forest seemed to suffer. Trees caught fire. The sky turned red.
She fell to her knees when it ended. I rushed to her side.
"I'm fine," she breathed. "But it's getting harder to control. I saw her again—the Queen. She watches through them."
Rhys limped over, face cut, but alive. "That was a warning. The real army waits at the gate."
I helped Aria up. My hands were stained with ash and blood. Her blood, I feared. The fire inside her was eating away her strength.
We pressed on.
The gate stood deep in the heart of the forest. An archway of bone and twisted iron, pulsing with dark light. Chains of shadow coiled around its frame, and within its circle, a void shimmered.
The Cage of Nightmares.
Aria stared at it, then at me. "This is it."
I nodded. "Then we end it."
The final battle had not begun. But it loomed close, breathing down our necks. I could feel the Queen. I could hear her laughter on the wind. She wanted us to come. She wanted the fire. The blood. The chaos.
But she had no idea what we had become.
And I had no idea what it would cost.