Chapter 2 Ash and Claws

Ten Years Later – The Ashenreach Wastes

Seraphina stood alone in the heart of a dead forest, the blackened remains of trees clawing at the sky like skeletal fingers. The air crackled around her with barely contained magic. Each breath she drew burned, not from fire but from power.

Her power.

"Again," hissed Mother Virelle, one of Morgana's oldest and cruelest acolytes. "The spell, child. Or you'll sleep with the ash wolves tonight."

Seraphina clenched her fists. Her wrists were raw from the iron cuffs she wore-enchanted to suppress her magic. Her throat ached from silence, for the witches rarely let her speak. Words were dangerous, they'd said. Especially hers.

But today, they wanted them. Today, they dared her to use them.

The ground beneath her boots was scorched and cracked, the sky above choked with smoke. Her heart beat in steady, defiant rhythm.

She opened her mouth and the magic surged.

The air twisted around her, sudden and fierce, like a storm unfurling inside her chest. Her eyes glowed violet. Her breath turned molten. She spoke the incantation not as the witches taught her, but how she felt it, raw and furious.

"Sol'reth kahl et venara!"

Fire exploded outward in a ring, ripping through the air, turning the dead trees to ash in seconds. Mother Virelle screamed, shielding her face as her cloak caught flame.

Seraphina didn't flinch.

When the fire cleared, she stood in the center of a scorched circle. Her pale skin shimmered with heat. Her hair, once black, now shimmered with threads of burning silver. She wasn't just a child of witches.

She was something else.

Something the witches feared.

A slow clap echoed through the clearing.

Morgana emerged from the smoke, her presence commanding the shadows to crawl. "Very good, little flame," she purred. "You'll burn kingdoms one day."

Seraphina said nothing, but her heart thundered. Not with pride-but defiance.

Let them fear her.

Let all of them burn.

***

Meanwhile – The Blackfang Highlands

The river tore through the valley like a silver serpent, swollen with spring melt and as wild as the girl who sprinted along its rocky edge.

Lyra.

Barefoot, breathless, feral.

Her bones cracked mid-stride as her body shifted, her small frame stretching and reshaping with terrifying ease. Fur spilled down her limbs like silk, and where the girl once ran, a massive wolf now bounded, silver-eyed and lean with strength.

She wasn't supposed to shift yet. No pup shifted before their thirteenth year. But Lyra had done it at nine. And ever since, the elders whispered behind her back, calling her cursed, god-touched, unnatural.

She loved it.

She lived for it.

Her wolf ran faster than any scout, her teeth sharper than any fang in the pack. She could smell storms before they broke, and sense hearts beating from half a mile away. She didn't hunt like the others. She played with her prey. And when her blood ran hot, when her rage surged. She didn't just shift.

She transcended.

Today, she chased a shadow deeper into the woods. A loner. A rogue vampire who'd dared trespass on Blackfang soil.

Her claws dug into moss and stone, her breath a growl of pleasure. When the scent grew stronger, rotten roses and blood. She leapt from a cliff's edge and landed atop the leech with a bone-crunching thud.

He hissed, drawing a blade laced with silver.

She shifted mid-fight, rising to her feet in one breathless second naked, beautiful, deadly. Her skin was streaked with mud and moonlight, her silver eyes wild with adrenaline.

"You're a bold one," she said, voice low and teasing. "Or very, very stupid."

The vampire sneered. "You're just a pup."

Lyra grinned and drove her claws into his chest.

***

Later That Night : Two Fates, Two Flames

In the coven's high tower, Seraphina sat on the edge of a stone windowsill, watching the stars.

She had never left the Ashenreach. The sky was her only freedom.

Her magic coiled beneath her skin like a living fire. She could feel it even now, flickering in her fingertips, curling in her breath. Sometimes it whispered. Other times, it screamed.

The witches wanted a weapon.

She would give them a goddess.

Far away, in a den carved into the cliffs of the Highlands, Lyra crouched beside a fire, her kill fresh and warm. Her body still ached from the shift, from the battle. But her spirit? It soared.

She was stronger than any wolf her age. Stronger, even, than her father had been.

But it wasn't strength she craved.

It was purpose.

Something inside her yearned,howled for more. More than the woods. More than the pack. She didn't know what. Or who.

Just that her fate hadn't yet begun.

***

In the veil between realms, the gods watched.

A silver thread shimmered. A violet thread burned.

Closer and closer they wound, drawn by fate, drawn by war, drawn by the collision the world would never survive.

But not yet.

The time had not come.

The girl of flame would grow in the dark, shaped by secrets and hate.

The girl of fang would rise among wolves, feared and worshipped.

And when they met the men the gods had chosen for them-Kael the Alpha King, and Thorne the Vampire Lord,their magic would ignite. Love. Destruction. Desire beyond mortal understanding.

The gods leaned closer.

Smiling.