The birds didn't sing when Seraphina crossed the northern border. They only watched in silence, perched high in the moss-laced branches, their black eyes unblinking. The trees made no effort to stop her this time. There were no roots clutching at her ankles or whispers trying to redirect her path. The forest had made its choice.
She was no longer part of it.
She moved like wind through the snow-dusted underbrush, the hood of her dark cloak pulled low over her face. Her satchel carried little—just the moon-marked blade Elder Raen had left her without a word, a waterskin, a faded wolf-pelt scarf that had belonged to her mother, and a single black stone that pulsed faintly when she touched it.
The stone was from the pool.
It hadn't stopped whispering since the night she remembered everything.
She hadn't said goodbye to anyone. Miriya would grieve, but she would understand. The Vale wolves couldn't protect her from what she had to become, and they would suffer if they tried. Her presence in the pack had already started drawing things from the shadows—crows circling during daylight, hunters finding deer drained of blood but not torn, strange wolves spotted at the edges of their wards.
She was being watched.
By more than one power.
And if she stayed, the Vale would burn.
So she walked.
Not toward the capital. Not yet. There were other places first. Lands beyond the old river, ruins long forgotten by the High Council. The Temple of Echoes. The Hollow Ridge. And deeper still, the one place no map dared mark—the Blood Archive, where the records of erased queens and broken Lunas were sealed beneath iron and salt.
If she was going to destroy Kael Thorne, she needed more than memory.
She needed history.
And not the kind written in stone—but the kind buried in blood.
---
Kael watched the snow fall from the tower balcony, a glass of untouched wine in his hand. He had not slept in two nights. Every time his eyes closed, he saw her face—both as she had been and as she now might be.
He didn't know the name Seraphina Vale.
But he felt her.
More vividly than ever.
The bond he had thought dead now surged beneath his skin like fire. It wasn't constant—it flickered, retreated, returned in bursts—but when it came, it brought scent and sound and memory. Last night, he woke to the smell of pine and wet stone—the exact scent of the Vale Forest after rain.
He knew what that meant.
The bond was reforming.
Illegally.
And impossibly.
"Bring the Seer," he ordered without turning.
Soren, seated at the war table nearby, sighed. "Again?"
Kael didn't answer. The Beta rose, weary but loyal, and left the chamber.
Within the hour, the Seer arrived.
She was a wisp of a woman, older than she looked, her long white braids woven with bones and moonbeads. Her eyes were milky and distant, but her voice was clear.
"You feel her."
Kael's jaw flexed. "It's not her."
The Seer tilted her head. "And yet, it burns."
He didn't respond.
She moved closer, placing two fingers just above the mark on his chest. He allowed it, though he tensed under her touch. The Seer muttered an incantation. The room went cold.
Then she whispered, "She has returned."
Kael looked away. "That's not possible."
"The bond never died. It only waited."
"I buried her."
"You buried her body. Not her soul."
Kael's eyes narrowed. "What does she want?"
The Seer gave a sad, thin smile. "What you gave her, my king. Pain."
---
Seraphina reached the edge of the Ashmere Ruins just after midnight. The moon was waning now, but her path was clear. The ruins were older than the High Accord, older than any surviving pack. The stones hummed with memory, and every step she took stirred dust that had not been touched in a hundred years.
She passed beneath a crumbling arch and felt the weight of ghost eyes press against her skin.
They recognized her.
In the inner courtyard, she knelt beside a collapsed altar and pressed the black stone from the mirror pool against the ground.
It glowed.
A low rumble echoed beneath her, and the earth shifted. Stone slid over stone as a hidden stairway unfurled itself beneath her feet.
She descended.
The air turned colder with every step. The walls were covered in ancient glyphs—some from the Old Tongue, some even older. At the base of the stair, a sealed door waited, carved with the sigil of a moon split in two.
Her fingers traced the line.
It burned her. The door opened.
Inside was a single chamber. And in the center, a sarcophagus.
Not of a body—but of records.
The final resting place of Luna Althea Caelum.
She approached slowly. The chamber was protected by blood magic. The moment she stepped too close, a sigil flared on the ground.
She knelt.
And whispered the curse she had spoken in death.
"I will return—not to love you again, but to ruin you."
The magic recognized her. The seal broke.
Inside, she found what the Council had hidden. Her crown. Her journals. Her final letter—never delivered. And the blade Kael had used to sever their bond before ordering her execution.
She took them all.
Her hands did not shake.
Her heart did not flinch.
She would reclaim every piece of herself.
And then she would take everything else.
---
Kael rode through the forests of the eastern ridge in silence, his men behind him in tight formation. He hadn't told them what they were looking for—only that it was urgent. Wolves had gone missing along the outer border. Rogues, they thought. But the tracks were wrong.
Too silent. Too precise.
He dismounted near the old moonwell and knelt beside the tracks.
Small feet. Unshod. Light as air.
His heart stopped.
He reached forward, touched the edge of a footprint still warm in the dirt.
And for the first time in seven years, his mark burned.
He gripped his chest, falling forward with a grunt.
"Your Majesty!" Soren ran to him.
But Kael couldn't speak.
Because the bond didn't just burn now.
It sang.
---
Seraphina looked to the stars that night and smiled.
He had felt her.
It had begun.