Mira Thornvale

Lia was once the healer of the White Rose Clan. At seventeen, she watched her people slaughtered by the Bloodclaw Legion. She survived only because she treated an injured enemy soldier—an act that branded her a traitor. To protect that boy, she willingly endured three years of imprisonment in the Bloodclaw camp, never uttering a word.

She believed he had long forgotten her. Yet she never knew that boy was now the Bloodclaw's ruthless warlord—Karl Thorne, codenamed "The Bone General," who swore an oath to "sever all ties to the past with his own hands."


The Wolfbone Promise

The message came wrapped in frost-damaged parchment, delivered by a trembling courier:


> *“Miners dead within hours. Veins blackened. No cure holds. We found old imperial canisters buried in collapse. Please—send the Wolfbone General.”*


Karl read the note twice beneath a sky that refused to snow.


He hadn’t been called that name in three years.


With rose seeds. And a journal—leather-worn, ink-faded.


Lia’s protocols, annotated in his hand.


The mine sat like a broken tooth in the ice.


Collapsed shafts. Makeshift tents of canvas and soot.


Miners coughed blood in corners. Children buried their faces in soot-streaked blankets.


Karl entered without escort, wearing only his gray coat.


He ignored them. Moved straight to the contaminated tunnel.


The bodies were curled like wilted petals.


Chapter 17 – Awakening in the Flame