Chapter 4 The Stone and the Silence

I didn't tell anyone about the pendant.

Not Kael. Not Corin. Not even the strange-eyed healer who passed me in the corridor with a look that said she knew more than she should.

Stormveil was full of watchers. People who listened without speaking and spoke without moving their mouths. I didn't trust any of them. Not yet.

But that morning, I felt something shift.

The wind was sharper. The trees didn't sway.

And when I stepped out of my quarters, the wolves in the lower training yard stopped mid-spar and stared at me like they'd never seen a girl before.

I didn't look away.

I let them watch.

Because fear was its own kind of weapon.

And I had precious little else.

The council hadn't summoned me again, but word spread faster than fire on dry grass. Some said Kael had chosen me for her resemblance to a fallen Luna. Others whispered I was cursed. That I hadn't been rejectedI had been marked twice, and the moon didn't like that.

They were all wrong.

But even I didn't know what the truth was.

Corin met me near the eastern boundary.

"You shouldn't be out here alone," he said.

"I'm not alone," I answered.

He blinked once. "You're not?"

"No."

I didn't elaborate. Neither did he.

Instead, he handed me a satchel. "Alpha wants you to learn the land."

"Why?"

Because land remembers what wolves forget."

He turned before I could press further.

I hated riddles. But Stormveil seemed to run on them.

The satchel held a map, a compass, and a book. Bound in cracked leather, the book had no title, but the first page had a name scratched faintly into the corner.

Elandra.

I didn't know the name.

But my chest tightened when I touched it.

Like it belonged to something I'd buried before I ever learned to speak.

I took the trail north.

It wove through silver trees and overgrown stones, most of them carved. Not for direction. For memory.

One stone bore the crescent againthis time with a fourth symbol scratched in beneath it.

A flame.

When I reached for it, the wind stopped.

Completely.

No rustle.

No breeze.

Just quiet.

Then, from behind me, a voice:

"You shouldn't touch that."

I turned.

Rowen stood at the tree line, arms crossed.

"Why not?" I asked.

"Because you don't know what it answers to."

I let my hand rest on the stone anyway.

"What do you want from me, Rowen?"

He didn't move.

"I want to know why the ground burns after you walk on it."

My throat tightened. "What are you talking about?

"The training yard. The garden path. The cliffs." His voice was even. "Everywhere you walk, it pulses."

"I didn't do anything."

"Exactly," he said.

He stepped forward, slowly, deliberately, until we were close enough to feel each other breathe.

"I don't trust you," I said quietly.

"Good."

He reached up slow, not aggressiveand brushed his fingers against the edge of my pendant.

"It's older than it looks."

I froze. "You've seen it before."

"I've seen what it was made for."

My skin prickled.

What was it made for?" I asked.

His mouth twitchedlike he almost smiled.

"To wake something."

Then he turned and vanished into the trees.

Back at the estate, I went straight to the archives.

Corin had shown me once, briefly, but I remembered the paththrough the kitchen hall, past the wine cellar, down a narrow stair carved directly into the stone.

The archive was dark and vast, lined in old scrolls and books with gold-etched spines. Most of them were too worn to read. But in the corner, near the sealed crates, I found a ledger.

Pack births. Luna lines. Bloodline pairings.

Ashfall's name was listed.

So was ThorneCian's family.

But not mine.

No mention of Caelwyn. Not in the Luna registries. Not in the healer rolls. Not even in the outlier file.

I didn't exist.

Not on paper.

Not in Stormveil.

Not anywhere.

Later that night, Kael found me in the inner courtyard.

He didn't speak right away.

Just sat beside me on the cold stone bench and handed me a flask.

"It's not poisoned," he said.

"Comforting."

I took a sip. Bitter. Sharp.

Not wine.

Not anything I recognized.

"Did you know there are stories of Luna-borne girls who go unmarked?" he asked suddenly.

I turned to him. "Stories?"

"Old ones. From before the pact laws. They weren't chosen by Alphas. They weren't claimed. They were left to the moon."

"To die?"

"To wake something worse."

The wind howled thensharp against the courtyard walls.

Kael didn't flinch.

"I've seen three bloodlines carry that pendant you wear," he said.

"And?"

"None of them lived past their twenty-first year."

I stared at him.

"I'm twenty -one."

"I know."

He stood and walked away, coat flaring behind him like a shadow with memory.

That night, I dreamed again.

The three wolves returned.

This time, they weren't still.

They moved toward meone cautious, one violent, one silent.

When they circled me, I felt something rise in my chest.

Not fear.

Recognition.

The silent wolf opened its mouth.

And in a voice that sounded like mine, it whispered:

"You belong to no one."

I woke before dawn, heart racing, the room colder than it should've been. Frost coated the inside of the window, spiderwebbed across the glass like veins. I hadn't opened it.

Andsomeone had written a word in the frost, traced by a fingertip I didn't feel:

Unclaimed.

I wiped it away. It returned moments later.

The pendant burned against my skin.

I stood quickly, stepping outside, but the corridor was empty. Silent.

Only one sound broke the stillnessthree soft knocks from behind the wall.

Not the door.

The wall.

The same rhythm I'd heard in my dreams.

And this time, when I whispered back...

I wasn't alone.

And in the silence that followed, something whispered back

not with words,

but with memory.

Ancient. Familiar.

Watching