Chapter 14 – Ashborn Dreams and Broken Warnings

Kaelen didn't wake the next morning.

Not really.

His eyes opened, yes. But what stared back wasn't the man I knew.

They were eyes too calm. Too ancient.

Like something inside him had stopped pretending.

"Kaelen?" I whispered, kneeling beside the mat of moss we'd laid near the Cradle's inner altar. "You're safe. It's just us."

His lips moved, forming no words. Just breath.

Then, softly

"The field is burning."

I stiffened. "What field?"

"The one we die in," he said, voice flat.

Then he blinked and whatever force that had taken hold vanished like mist at sunrise. He gasped, sitting upright, sweat clinging to his skin.

"Seraphina" His hands gripped my arms, trembling. "I saw you screaming. Covered in ash. You were holding the child, but... it wasn't a child anymore."

"What do you mean?"

He looked away. "It had my eyes. But they were empty. Like the Wyrm's."

We left the Cradle shortly after dawn.

Maelin gave us a sealed scroll before we departed, wrapped in the black silk of the Spiritweavers.

"This scroll will lead you to the Oracle," she said. "But it won't open until one of you bleeds willingly for the other."

"Where do we go?" Kaelen asked.

Maelin pointed north. "The Hollow of Ash. The Oracle resides in the ruins of what was once the first haven between witch and wolf. You'll need answers… before the curse answers for you."

I nodded.

But part of me already knew no answer would come without a cost.

We rode through the Hollowlands in silence.

The terrain changed quickly: where lush trees once arched overhead, we now passed through dying woods and scorched dirt. Birds no longer sang. Shadows moved wrong.

Kaelen rode ahead, restless. His movements were clipped, as if his own skin was a cage.

That night, under a sickle moon, we made camp near a stream laced with red minerals. The water smelled of rust and salt like it remembered blood.

As Kaelen lay in his bedroll, tossing, I sat beside the fire, clutching the scroll Maelin gave us.

It refused to open.

Not a single whisper of magic.

Until I sliced my palm.

I didn't think. I just did it.

Blood dripped onto the scroll.

It pulsed.

Then... hissed open.

Black script bloomed like wildfire across the page:

"To find what you seek, you must lose what binds. The Oracle sees no lies. Only truths you fear."

Beneath it, a sigil shimmered

A snake devouring its own tail, ringed in flame.

Kaelen stirred beside me.

His voice was thick, fevered. "You opened it?"

I nodded.

He reached for my hand, saw the wound, and frowned. "You shouldn't have done that."

"I had to," I said, voice hoarse. "Time is running out. You feel it, don't you?"

He didn't answer.

But his eyes, now silver and burning, told me everything.

That night, I dreamed.

But not alone.

In the dream, I stood in a burned forest. The trees were blackened bones. The sky bled red. Wind howled like mourning wolves.

Ahead of me stood a figure cloaked in smoke indistinguishable in form, yet familiar.

It raised a hand.

And from the shadows, Kaelen's body appeared, chained to a stone, bleeding gold.

My voice cracked as I tried to run to him but my feet were rooted in fire.

"You must choose," the figure rasped. "His life… or the child."

"I won't choose!" I screamed.

The figure tilted its head. "Then the curse will."

I woke choking.

Kaelen sat up too, gasping.

"You saw it," he whispered.

My heart sank. "How do you know?"

"I saw it too."

He looked down at my stomach. Not with tenderness but fear.

"We're running out of time," he said.

We reached the Hollow of Ash two days later.

Or what was left of it.

Once a sanctuary, now reduced to smoking ruins. Pillars cracked in half. Statues of wolf and witch torn down. The air reeked of magic gone sour.

But at the center untouched stood a massive obsidian gate.

The mark from the scroll glowed above it.

A voice rang out from the stones:

"Name your pain."

Kaelen stepped forward. "I carry a bloodline doomed to destroy the ones I love."

The gate hissed.

Then turned to me.

"And you?"

My throat tightened. "I carry the child of a curse… and I don't know if it's a miracle or a monster."

The gate opened.

Inside was not what I expected.

A single circular chamber with no roof. Stars wheeled overhead despite it being day.

In the center sat a girl.

No older than sixteen.

Eyes like galaxies. Skin like stone.

"Are you... the Oracle?" I asked cautiously.

She didn't speak.

She simply raised a hand, and everything vanished.

I stood in a memory not mine.

Kaelen's.

He was six, trembling in a stone chamber. His father stood above him, a blade in one hand, a branding iron in the other.

"You will learn to endure," the man growled.

Then came the scream.

I flinched and the scene shattered.

Next, a different memory.

My own.

My mother, holding a baby girl. "She must never know," she whispered to someone in the shadows. "Or the prophecy will wake."

The shadowed figure stepped forward.

It was Maelin.

I snapped back into the Oracle's chamber, gasping.

Kaelen was beside me, just as pale.

The Oracle finally spoke:

"You were never cursed for falling in love. You were cursed because your love could end everything."

"What does that mean?" I choked out.

"The first hybrid child was meant to bridge peace. But the world wasn't ready. It turned on her. And in death... she laid a curse on the line that betrayed her."

She looked at Kaelen.

"And you, Alpha, are her blood."

Then to me.

"And you... are her soul.

A silence settled.

Then Kaelen asked, "Is there any way to stop it?"

The Oracle's voice dropped. "Only one."

"What?"

"A death before the eclipse."

I staggered back. "What eclipse?"

But the Oracle faded.

The chamber trembled.

And we were standing in ash once again.

As we stumbled from the ruins, a figure stepped from the trees.

Cloaked in silver, hood pulled low.

"Seraphina," the voice said, soft, familiar.

Kaelen's body snapped forward.

His eyes turned gold.

I felt his rage before I heard it.

"Malric."