Chapter 81

Chapter 81: The Queen and the King of Ruin

Selene stood crowned in the ruins of the Unwritten Lands.

The once-dormant skies split open like paper. Storms churned with violet lightning. Stars blinked in patterns only seers could read — patterns etched into fate.

And the whispers?

They knelt.

Thousands of echoes, bound souls, and ancient remnants bowed before the girl who had once been hunted for her heat — now wearing the Crown of the Abyss.

Valerian stepped forward slowly. The shadow of her power licked across his skin like flame. She wasn't just omega. She wasn't just bonded.

She was something new.

> "You shouldn't be able to stand," she whispered, half-broken, half-divine.

"I wasn't made to kneel," he replied, voice rough. "Not unless it's for you."

Selene closed her eyes. That familiar ache, that warmth… the matebond had changed. Stretched. Deepened. Her connection to Valerian no longer felt like a thread — but a core of her being.

"Do you feel it?" she asked.

Valerian nodded, jaw clenched. "Everything's shifting."

And it was.

Across the realms, monarchs flinched. The crown's resurrection meant prophecy had chosen its host. And that meant war.

"You should've let me burn," Selene said softly, almost to herself.

Valerian pulled her close, wrapping his cloak around her shoulders. "You didn't burn. You rose."

She looked up at him, haunted. "I'm not the same girl who tried to run from her bond."

"And I'm not the man who swore never to love again."

Silence pulsed between them.

Then thunder cracked like a war drum.

From the north, the black banners of the fallen courts rose. Blood mages, rogue nightwalkers, and traitor kings all converging toward a single name whispered on wind:

Selene.

> Omega queen.

Prophecy bearer.

Breaker of the Bloodhound Curse.

And still, Selene stood.

"I will not run," she said.

"You never did," Valerian whispered.

Then the skies tore again — and from it came something worse.

A familiar scent. One that froze Selene's blood.

Ciro.

Her brother.

The one she thought had died with her family.

Now reborn by the Abyss — wearing no crown, only rage.

> "You stole it from me," he snarled from the storm.

"It was my fate."

Valerian unsheathed his blade. "He's not your brother anymore."

Selene stepped forward. "No," she said quietly, her voice full of tears and steel.

"He's the first soul I'll bury."

And she raised her hand.

Light — not moonlight, not magic, but something raw and old — poured from her palm like wildfire.

Ciro charged, roaring.

But he wasn't fast enough.

Because Selene wasn't a girl anymore.

She was a queen.

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Chapter 82 will bring the first battle of the Prophecy War — and it'll be brutal.