Chapter 3 The Ruins Claim Her

Nyra's POV

I wake to voices.

Not voices. Whispers. Hundreds of them, layered over each other like wind through leaves, speaking in a language I don't know but somehow understand.

Sister.

Broken one.

Welcome home.

My eyes open to silver moonlight so bright it hurts. I'm lying on cold stone, staring up at a sky I shouldn't be able to see through the thick canopy of Shadowpine. But the trees here are different. Dead. Their bare branches reach toward the moon like skeletal fingers.

I try to sit up and can't. My body feels like it's been shattered and put back together wrong. The corrupted bond still pulses in my chest, each beat sending fresh waves of agony through me.

"Where....."

The whispers surge louder, drowning out my voice.

The Moonfall Ruins. Where they brought us. Where they killed us.

I turn my head, forcing my neck to move despite the pain. Stone pillars surround me in a perfect circle, covered in carvings that seem to shift and writhe in the moonlight. Beyond them, shapes in the darkness. Headstones. Hundreds of them, stretching as far as I can see.

Not a sacred ground.

A graveyard.

We were omegas, the voices whisper. Like you. Told we were blessed. Told we were chosen. They lied.

The bond twists again, and I gasp, curling in on myself. The pain is worse here. Sharper. Like something's pulling the corrupted thread tighter, trying to rip it out of my chest entirely.

"I'm dying," I whisper to the empty air.

Yes, the voices agree. Bond corruption. It will kill you slowly. Days, maybe. Perhaps a week if you're strong.

"Good."

The word comes out bitter and broken. I mean it. Death would be better than this. Better than living with Kael's rejection carved into my soul.

Is it?

The question comes from everywhere and nowhere. The air around me shifts, thickening with power. The silver light grows brighter, and suddenly I'm not alone.

They're not solid. Not real. But I can see them anyway. Dozens of women, translucent and glowing, standing among the headstones. Omegas. All of them. Their faces are young, old, beautiful, scarred. Each one looks at me with eyes that know exactly what I'm feeling.

"Who are you?" I manage.

The first sacrifices, one of them says. She looks maybe eighteen, with long dark hair and kind eyes. They brought us here under false pretenses. Told us we were being blessed by the moon goddess. That our power would strengthen the packs.

They killed us instead, another continues, her voice sharp with rage. Took our power. Used it to create the alpha bloodlines. The hierarchy. Everything you've suffered under.

I stare at them, my mind struggling to process. "Sacrifices?"

The system was built on our deaths, the first woman says. They couldn't create alphas without destroying omegas first. Our power became theirs. Our silence became tradition.

The bond pulses again, and I cry out, my back arching off the stone.

The spirits move closer.

You're dying, one says gently. The rejection corrupted your bond. It's eating you alive from the inside.

"I know," I gasp. "I don't care."

Liar.

The word cuts through the pain. I force my eyes open, glaring at the nearest spirit.

"I'm not..."

You want to die because you can't live with the pain, she says. But underneath that, you're furious. You want him to hurt like you hurt. You want them all to pay for what they've done.

Yes.

The thought rises unbidden, raw and honest. I am furious. Beneath the heartbreak and the agony, there's rage burning so hot it feels like it might consume me.

Good, the spirits say in unison. Use it.

The silver light intensifies. It's not coming from the moon anymore. It's coming from the ruins themselves, from the stones beneath me, from the graves surrounding us. Ancient power, dormant for centuries, suddenly wide awake.

It touches my skin and I scream.

It's not painful. That's the worst part. It feels good. Like being submerged in warm water after freezing in the cold.

The power flows into me through every point of contact with the stone, seeping through my skin, my bones, my blood.

We've been waiting, the voices whisper. For someone like you. Someone broken enough to understand. Someone angry enough to change things.

The power spreads through my body, following pathways I didn't know existed. Everywhere it touches, the corrupted bond's pain lessens.

Not disappearing. Transforming. The ice-cold agony becomes something else. Something that burns and freezes at the same time.

I feel hands on me. Not real hands. Phantom touches, dozens of them, caressing my arms, my throat, my stomach. The spirits, reaching through whatever barrier separates the living from the dead, marking me.

"Stop," I gasp, but I don't mean it.

This will hurt, they warn. The transformation. The binding. It will unmake you and remake you.

"I don't want..."

Yes, you do. You want power. You want choice. You want to never be helpless again.

Yes. God, yes.

The power surges. I arch off the stone as it floods into me, overwhelming every sense. I can feel each spirit now, not just their presence but their deaths. The terror. The betrayal. The moment they realized they'd been lied to. The pain of having their power ripped away.

I experience all of it.

Every. Single. Death.

I scream until my throat is raw. The phantom hands hold me down, keeping me pressed against the stone as the power carves itself into my very soul. My skin burns.

I look down through tear-blurred vision and see marks appearing, silver lines spreading across my arms, my chest, my legs. Like scars, but glowing. Beautiful and terrible.

Somewhere in the distance, I feel the bond flare. Kael. He can sense something's wrong. Too late. Far too late.

Your wolf, the spirits whisper. She's dying.

I know. I can feel Senna fading, her presence growing fainter with each passing second. The bond corruption has nearly killed her.

Let her go, they urge. Let her die. We will give you something stronger.

"No," I sob. "Not Senna. Please, not her."

She cannot survive this. The power is too much. But she can be reborn.

The hands on my body tighten, and pleasure spikes through the pain. It's wrong, twisted, but undeniable. The power flowing into me doesn't just hurt. It feels like being worshipped, like being claimed, like being seen for the first time in my life.

My back arches again as another wave hits. The marks spread further, climbing up my throat, branching across my collarbone.

I can feel my hair changing, the strands turning silver from the roots down, the color leeching out as the moon's power replaces it.

Almost done, the spirits promise. Just a little more.

I'm not sure I'll survive a little more.

Deep inside my chest, I feel the moment Senna dies. My wolf, my companion since childhood, simply stops existing. The emptiness is worse than the bond corruption ever was. I'm hollow, gutted, alone in my own skin for the first time in my life.

I scream.

The ruins scream with me.

Power erupts from the stone beneath me, shooting upward in a pillar of silver light that pierces the sky. The phantom hands vanish. The spirits step back. I'm alone at the center of it, burning and freezing and dying and being born all at once.

Then something moves inside me.

Not Senna. Something else. Something that was born from her death and the ruins' power and my own rage. A presence that's both familiar and completely foreign.

Hello, she says, her voice deeper and older than Senna's ever was. I am what you need me to be.

My wolf. Dead and reborn in the same instant. The ruins bound themselves to my soul, and she came with them.