Chapter 5 From the Dead

The robe scrap trembled in Thorne's hand, stained with blood that hadn't dried.

Raya couldn't breathe.

"That's impossible," she whispered.

Thorne didn't flinch. "Is it?"

"She's dead," Raya said, half to him, half to herself. "I buried her."

He stepped closer. "You buried 'a body'. A closed-casket burial for a woman who supposedly died from a rogue ambush? Did you see the body's face, Raya?"

She faltered. She hadn't seen it. She had been kept from the body. They told her the wounds were too severe.

She was eight too young and too devastated to question it.

A memory surfaced, her father refusing to let her open the shroud. Her uncle was standing too still. The absence of a scent in the grave, one her wolf side should have picked up if she had a wolf.

She swallowed. "What are you saying?"

"I'm saying," Thorne said quietly, "that someone wanted you to believe she was dead. And someone went to a lot of trouble to hide what she really was."

Raya's fingers tightened on the necklace.

"You found this next to me. You said it had fresh blood."

He nodded.

"And that blood..."

Thorne tilted his head. "Not yours. Not from the fight. It was on the pendant before you touched it."

Her voice dropped to a whisper. "So she's alive?"

He didn't answer. He didn't have to.

Raya stumbled back, the world tilting. Her breath hitched. The rage, the grief, the unanswered years. it all crashed over her in waves.

The Beast stirred inside her again, slower this time. Hungrier, not for violence, but for truth.

.....

That night, Raya couldn't sleep.

She sat alone in her stone-walled den, holding the necklace in one hand and the robe scrap in the other. Her thoughts were a storm, her emotions coiling tighter by the hour.

Why fake a death? Why disappear?

And why did the Moon Cult or the Elders care about her mother?

A thought wormed its way into her mind and refused to leave.

Her mother was like her, carrying a beast, a monster inside her.

She tried to suppress the tremble that rose in her chest.

Was she the reason her mother disappeared ?

She didn't have time to linger on the pain.

Because at dawn, the drums sounded. It was time for another trial.

......

They led her to a canyon outside the rogue encampment. This wasn't the blood pit.

This looked older and wilder. A place of exile and monsters.

Stone carvings loomed from jagged cliffs. Markings she recognized, not from pack law, but from her mother's books. These were forgotten symbols, ancient ones.

At the cliff's edge, Thorne stood waiting. Behind him was a wooden cage.

Inside it was another prisoner.

A girl this time. She was thin and mute with terror. She had been shackled and bruised.

"Why is there a child in a cage?" Raya demanded, fury rising.

"She's not a child," Thorne said calmly. "She's one of them."

"The Moon Cult?"

He nodded once. "Caught spying. They've been tracking you."

Raya's pulse spiked. "What do they want?"

"They want you dead." His voice darkened. "Before the Red Moon rises. Before the Beast can fully take you."

Raya looked at the girl again. The child if that's what she really was. She met her gaze, and something in her eyes flashed silver.

"You want me to kill her?" Raya asked.

"No," Thorne said. "I want you to question her."

"And if she won't speak?"

He smiled faintly. "Then I want to see what your beast thinks of silence."

They locked Raya in a ritual circle with the girl.

Chains looped the edges. Ash marked the boundaries. The girl didn't move, she didn't speak.

Raya crouched low. "What's your name?"

The girl remained silent.

She softened her voice. "I don't want to hurt you."

Still nothing.

"She knows who you are," Thorne called from outside the circle. "She knows more about your past than you do."

Raya's jaw clenched.

*"Use me,"* the Beast whispered inside her. *"She's prey. Rip it from her soul."*

"No,not again."

But the girl smirked suddenly.

And said, "You don't even know your real name."

Raya froze. "What?"

The girl looked up. Her voice was strange-older than her years. Almost like someone else was speaking through her.

"She named you Raya to protect you. But your birth name, the one written in divine ink, was hidden the moment you were born."

"What is it?"

The girl smiled. "You're not ready."

Raya surged forward, grabbing her by the collar. "Tell me!"

The girl didn't flinch. She raised her wrist and beneath her sleeve, etched in scar tissue, was the symbol Raya had seen in her vision.

The seal of Lunestra.

"You're not the only vessel," she whispered.

A light exploded from the mark. The ritual circle ignited.

Everything happened at once. The flames turned blue.

The girl began to scream, but not in fear.

She was a conduit, not a spy.

This was a ritual, the girl was a sacrifice.

Energy poured from her body in a torrent of moonlight and shadow, slamming into Raya's chest.

The Beast screamed.

Raya fell to her knees.

And in her mind's eye-she saw her mother.

Not dead or buried, but alive.

Standing in a temple beneath the earth, her hand pressed to a stone altar.

And beside her...

Was another woman with Raya's face but older wearing a priestess's robe.

And just before the vision shattered, both women looked up-and whispered:

"The Beast wasn't sealed... it was born."