Chapter 8: Poison and Prophecy
She had failed.
Not just the plan, the message.
And worse… Lyra had read it.
Not just as an attempt. But as a signature. A tactic soaked in old blood and familiar betrayal.
Disguised as tragedy.
But Lyra had seen through it.
The old game, whispers, subterfuge, poisoned paths, had been cracked open.
And Lyra stood now, not as a rival, but as a threat.
Selena's breath slowed.
This wasn't over.
It was only just beginning.
If Lyra wanted to play the Luna's game?
Then let her.
Selena lifted the goblet to her lips, eyes glinting over its rim like a blade drawn in the dark.
She would play.
And she would win.
The doors of the Elder Hall burst open.
A thunderous crack that echoed off marble like a war cry.
Every head turned.
Lyra strode inside.
Blood still dried in jagged rivulets along her collarbone, blackened at the edges.
The mark on her wrist pulsed beneath her sleeve, dim, silver, steady. A quiet warning.
Each step of her boots struck the polished stone with brutal clarity, like war drums counting down to judgment.
The chamber shuddered in silence.
Gaslight flickered along the tall columns, casting warped shadows across the ancient seal carved into the floor.
The Elders, some already half-risen in alarm, straightened with stiff spines and narrowed eyes.
At the center, Kael sat in his ironwood chair, carved with the crest of the Crimson Fang. His jaw clenched.
Beside him, Selena, immaculate in moon-threaded silk, looked the image of composed royalty.
But her fingers, they twitched at the hem of her gown. A tremor, barely there.
A single crack in polished porcelain.
Lyra said nothing.
She walked until she stood before the council's gaze, then raised her hand slowly.
And let it fall.
CLINK.
The pendant, silver, sharp-edged, unmistakable, hit the floor with a sound that split the silence.
The insignia of a Blackthorn Fang.
Selena's elite guard.
The pendant spun across the stone, slow and mocking, before coming to rest in the pale light. Every Elder saw it.
Lyra didn't blink.
"I was attacked last night," she said, voice cool and iron-forged. "This was torn from one of your personal sentinels."
The silence snapped like bone.
Chaos erupted.
Voices collided like blades, growls, protests, startled gasps.
Accusations flew like arrows loosed in a storm.
Elders bared teeth, some rising with roars for justice, others snarling for silence.
Selena's face paled, just for a flicker.
The blood drained from her cheeks before she drew in a slow breath and straightened her spine, draping herself again in cold poise.
Her lips curled into a mask of disdain. But her eyes betrayed her.
They searched the floor too quickly. Looked for something, control, escape, denial.
Kael's chair scraped harshly against stone.
He surged to his feet.
BANG.
His hands slammed onto the table, voice thunderstruck.
"That's a bold claim," Kael said, his voice echoing across the hall.
"Unproven. Convenient."
But the usual edge, his iron authority, was gone.
And Lyra saw it.
In the slight twitch at his jaw.
In the way his gaze flicked, too fast, to Selena, then away again.
He didn't believe her.
Not aloud.
Not where the Elders could hear.
But somewhere, buried beneath the weight of his posturing… he did.
Lyra stepped forward, fire crackling in her bones.
"You want proof?"
Her voice cracked like a lash across the chamber, sharp enough to silence breath.
The torches flared in the silence, casting her eyes in silver blaze.
Sweat glistened at her brow, catching the light like warpaint.
Her presence pulsed, unbreakable, undeniable.
"The wound on my shoulder." She jerked back her cloak, revealing the torn fabric, the raw red welt still scarring her skin.
"The broken claw I ripped from its hand." She flung the blackened shard of obsidian steel to the floor.
CLANG.
It skittered, came to rest at Kael's feet.
"The system logs burned into my core, timed, traced, recorded."
Her voice dropped, cold, slow, deadly.
"How many more bodies must fall before we call it what it is?"
The silence that followed was brittle.
Like a frost-covered branch holding just a breath too long before it snaps.
Somewhere near the back, someone exhaled sharply.
A few wolves gasped. Others flinched.
The ripple of reaction spread like dry leaves catching fire, soft, wild, unstoppable.
And then, movement.
At the far end of the stone dais, one of the Elder Matriarchs stirred.
She was draped in faded ceremonial silks, moth-eaten and heavy with age.
Her skin was parchment-thin. Her eyes, milky and blind, stared through time, not light.
But her presence sliced through the chamber like a knife honed on generations.
She inhaled deeply, nostrils flaring. As if scenting something not in the air, but in the truth.
Then she leaned forward, each movement slow but certain.
"Then let there be a vote," she rasped, voice a gravel-hiss that somehow filled every inch of space.
"Let truth stand where silence once ruled."
The chamber froze.
No one moved.
No one spoke.
Every throat tightened.
Every spine braced.
A ceremonial bell tolled, once.
Low.
Mournful.
The sound rolled through the vaulted stone like thunder underwater, ancient and knowing.
Names followed.
One by one.
Summoned like ghosts to judgment.
Elders.
Commanders.
Bloodline heirs.
They stepped forward in turn, the silence around them thick with breathless tension.
Each approached the obsidian monolith that stood at the center of the hall, tall, jagged, veined with moonstone.
Its surface pulsed faintly, as if alive, as if listening.
The monolith they touched was the Judgement Stone, said to be the Moon Goddess's tooth.
It had shattered the last alpha who lied under its gaze.
Each speaker placed their hand against the stone.
Some did so with pride, heads high, shoulders squared, their voices ringing clear as they spoke their allegiance.
Others reached out with trembling hands, voices low, forced through clenched teeth.
And some… some couldn't even look at Lyra.
Their eyes slid past her, hollow, distant, as though the choice was not theirs, but inherited from ghosts and family names long buried.
Legacy wore its crown like iron.
Each vow shimmered into the air, visible to all, threads of silver light unspooling from their palms and spiraling into the monolith, where they burned briefly before vanishing.
Ancient magic. Old law.
Binding truth to consequence.
The hall had never known such silence.
Not during war.
Not during famine.
Not even during the last Luna's death rites.
And when the final name was called, the air cracked.
Not with voice. But with verdict.
Split.