MARKED BY FIRE, OWNED BY FATE

It wasn't the wind that woke her.

It was the stillness.

The kind that didn't feel like peace—but preparation.

Vireya sat at the edge of the bed, robe knotted at her waist, tea untouched beside her. Her fingertips traced the faint burn marks across her arms from the last time the veil cracked. They hadn't faded. Not completely.

Nothing ever did, in this place.

Kael had left before sunrise—again. There were new fortifications being built beyond the outer ridge. Whispers of movement in the northern deadlands. Something was stirring. She didn't need scouts to confirm it. She felt it in her bones.

In her wolf.

Ashira's presence had become steady now. A shadow beside her thoughts. Protective. Silent. Alert.

Vireya stood, letting the breeze from the open balcony kiss her face. It carried smoke, pine, and something else.

Ink.

She turned before the knock came.

Iska leaned against the doorway, hair a mess, boots muddy, scrolls clutched like she'd just wrestled them out of a tomb.

"I found something," the witch said, eyes unusually serious. "You're going to want to see this."

The room smelled of dust and blood.

Not fresh.

Old blood. Spilled long before Vireya had ever walked these halls.

Iska dropped the scrolls onto the war table and unwrapped a thin, leather-wrapped bundle. She didn't speak. Just pushed it forward.

A letter.

The parchment was aged and sealed in wax, the symbol pressed into it too warped to recognize.

But something about it buzzed beneath Vireya's skin the moment her fingers touched it.

"I don't know how long it's been hidden," Iska said. "Found it buried beneath some collapsed records in the Flamborn vault. Deep. Like someone didn't just forget it—they buried it."

Vireya stared at the cracked seal. It was old. Older than anything she'd seen come out of the archives. The ink was faded red, like it had been written with blood.

There was no name.

No signature.

Just the words.

If you're reading this, then you're walking the edge of something no one alive remembers.

They will lie to you.

They will call you the end.

But there was a reason they silenced the ones who came before.

Power they couldn't control doesn't disappear.

It waits.

And when it rises again, the realms will remember what they tried to bury.

The ink smudged beneath her thumb.

There was no sender. But something in her blood ached as she read it. Like it recognized the weight of those words.

"Who wrote this?" she asked, voice tight.

Iska shook her head. "That's the thing. There's no trace sigil. No pack marker. No region. Just that letter—and two scrolls that were blank except for one word scratched across both."

Vireya looked at her. "What word?"

Iska hesitated.

Then: "Protector."

They didn't say much after that.

Vireya sat in the old reading chair, legs pulled up, letter clenched in one hand.

Iska stood by the window, arms crossed, tapping her foot like she wanted to scream and didn't know how.

"You think the council knows?" Vireya finally asked.

"I think they think they know," Iska said. "But that letter wasn't written by someone afraid of you. It was written by someone afraid of what would happen if you didn't survive."

Vireya's stomach twisted.

The council didn't fear her for no reason.

But maybe…

Maybe the reason wasn't the right one.

Kael returned near dusk, soaked in rain and looking like a walking god of war—minus the mood. He smelled of ash and iron and strategy.

"You're scowling," he said, pulling off his cloak. "What happened?"

Vireya passed him the letter without a word.

He read it twice.

Then folded it with deliberate care.

"I'll have it sealed in the vault."

"No," she said. "Keep it here. I want to remember."

He didn't ask why.

Just tucked it beside his blade.

The next morning, Vireya woke from a dream that left her breathless.

Not fear.

A whisper.

Not Ashira this time.

Something else.

Words she couldn't remember—but a name burned at the edge of her tongue.

Her mother's name.

Gone before she could ever ask questions.

But now?

She was starting to think her mother had never really left.

Iska didn't barge in that day. She came in quiet, holding a cup of something thick and dark, face unreadable.

"I did a tracking spell," she said. "On the scrolls."

Vireya blinked. "You said they didn't have markers."

"They didn't," Iska said. "But they were hiding something. A ward. One that only breaks when someone with the same blood opens them."

Vireya stilled.

"And?"

Iska exhaled. "There's a forest. In the east. Old magic. Older than even this castle. The scrolls were whispering about it. I think... I think your wolf already knows the way."

Vireya didn't speak.

She just nodded once.

Because the forest from her dreams?

The one with the glowing green eyes and the endless mist?

It was real.

And it was waiting.