Unknowingly, she birthed the unforgivable, and nothing could reclaim what was lost.
~~~~~
She took him with her into the cave. The wolf followed, nervous but loyal, his paws hesitant against the cold stone. Yet his trust in her was unshaken.
The eternal fire glowed at the center, She began the ritual, her chants spiraling into the silence. The wolf lay nearby, his silver coat gleaming faintly in the flame's light, his eyes never leaving her. He rested, watched, and waited.
But the time came. The Ritual demanded his soul.
She called to him softly, "Will you come help me with something?"
"Yes, Your Highness," he answered, and stepped toward her without doubt. For a moment, her heart faltered. Could she stop? Could she end this here? But her hunger, her arrogance, her thirst for power drowned the hesitation.
Her hand closed around the sword.
She turned—one swift motion—tears breaking in her eyes, blood spattering across her face.
The wolf fell, silent.
Far away, in the deep night, her grandmother stirred. Uncomfortable, Her eyes opened wide, a chill ran through her bones. Gyanwati… what have you done? She rose swiftly, her senses reaching out, feeling a shift—a dark pulse rippling through creation. With her divine sight she saw Gyanwati inside a cave; she saw that the girl was safe, but she could not understand what she was doing there. She ran into the forest, calling to the trees.
"Where is your queen?"
"She is gone, somewhere with the wolf," the branches whispered .
"Then tell her, when she returns, to come to me at once."
Gyanwati was in immense grief but not in guilt. The ritual was not yet complete.
From the wolf's blood and his last breath, she filled two sacred vessels:
—One of crystal, heavy with blood.
—One of pearl, capturing his final exhalation, his prāṇa (Life force), sealed within.
She placed them in a circle of ash and salt, drawn around the eternal fire. The scripture had warned: this circle must never be broken, the vessels never spilled. For sixty nights she must chant, her voice binding life and death together, until the dawn of the final day.
So she began. Her body weak, but her will never faltered. Night after night, the fire roared and the cave trembled with her mantras. Her eyes grew hollow, her lips dry, yet her arrogance carried her forward.
On the sixtieth dawn, feeling triumphant and certain she had completed the ritual, she lifted the vessels to offer them and claim the mastery. But as she raised the crystal vessel, a single drop escaped—slipping into the pearl, merging life and death before they touched the fire.
It was a mistake so small, yet devastating.
In that instant, the ritual changed. In these kind of rituals one change, even a breath, even a drop— and it turns out completely different . It becomes something else entirely.
The wolf's soul twisted in the vessel, corrupted. The ash circle cracked, and the power she longed for turned against her.
A scream echoed through the cave. Dark energy rushed around her, clinging like chains, she felt as if her skin was being pulled off, She felt her strength being torn away, her powers leeched from her body.
What was meant to grant her mastery over death had instead birthed its shadow—an abomination of the rite, feeding on her very soul.
And in that moment, Gyanwati knew—she had done the mistake that could never be undone.