The night after the warg attack was unnervingly quiet.
Too quiet.
Luna sat beside her fire, the heat licking at her numb fingers, but her heart thudded like thunder trapped in a ribcage. The storm had passed, leaving the forest still and damp. The trees dripped gently. The stars blinked in solemn silence above.
Yet, something stirred.
Beneath the fire.
Beneath the earth.
Beneath her skin.
The energy that had erupted from her in the clearing had vanished as suddenly as it had come. Now, only a whisper remained—like the dying ember of a flame or the final breath before a plunge into deep water.
She stared into the flames.
They flickered blue at the edges.
Not orange.
Not natural.
Her power, she realized, wasn't just tied to wind and earth.
Something else churned inside her now—colder. Hotter. A contradiction.
A convergence.
Ice and flame.
That night, sleep did not come.
Instead, Luna walked.
Through the trees, barefoot, her dress ragged and soaked with dew. The moon trailed her like a silent companion, casting shadows across the pathless woods.
She wasn't following a trail.
She was following a pull.
It tugged at her chest like a hook through her ribs, leading her deeper into the forgotten parts of the wild—places even rogues avoided. Branches grew thicker, trees taller, the air thinner. Snow began to appear on the ground, though it was early autumn.
Impossible.
Yet real.
The forest had changed.
And so had she.
By sunrise, she found it.
A frozen glade surrounded by towering ash trees, each twisted as if writhing in pain. At the center: a shallow pool frozen solid, steam rising from its middle like breath from an open wound.
Luna approached, drawn by instinct rather than reason.
She knelt beside the ice, placed her palm on its surface.
A crack echoed.
Then another.
And then the ice glowed.
Pale blue light spread beneath her hand, then up her arm—curling around her wrist, her shoulder, her collarbone.
A memory not her own flashed through her mind—
A woman cloaked in ash-gray fur, standing atop a burning field. Her hands glowed with frost and fire as wolves howled in mourning behind her.
Luna gasped, stumbling back.
But the voice returned.
"You carry what they buried."
"The fire they feared. The frost they silenced."
"They made you small because they could not contain what you are becoming."
"Child of ice and flame… you are their reckoning."
A surge of pain ripped through Luna's spine. She cried out, clutching the earth. Her body shook, her veins ablaze, yet frozen at the core.
The duality within her collided.
Heat scorched her breath.
Frost chilled her blood.
She fell to her knees, screaming without sound, the world spinning.
Then—stillness.
And a voice.
Not divine.
Not distant.
A man's voice. Sharp. Grounded.
"You're not supposed to be here."
She turned, eyes blurry with tears and light.
A man stood at the edge of the glade, cloaked in dark green leathers, hair as black as cinder and eyes glowing a soft cobalt. A jagged scar ran from his brow to his chin, but he stood tall—like someone used to being obeyed.
Luna tried to rise but staggered.
He was at her side before she hit the ground, catching her by the elbow.
"You're burning cold," he muttered. "Moon's teeth, you weren't supposed to awaken yet."
She blinked up at him. "Who… are you?"
He hesitated.
Then: "Call me Kael."
Kael built a fire in minutes.
Not with flint.
Not with steel.
He called the flame from the wood like it obeyed him.
Luna stared from across the glade, her body still trembling. Her hands glowed faintly even when she tried to hide them.
"You're like me," she whispered.
Kael glanced at her. "No. You're like her."
He motioned to the frozen pool.
"The Seer of Ashblood."
Luna tilted her head. "I don't understand."
"You will."
He tossed her a leather-wrapped bundle. Dried meat. Blackberries. Honeyed nuts.
She devoured them without grace.
Kael watched in silence.
"Power like yours," he said after a moment, "doesn't just happen. It's awakened. Called forward. Usually by pain."
Luna nodded, slow. "I was rejected by my fated mate before my entire pack."
Kael snorted. "Yeah, that would do it."
He leaned closer, firelight reflecting in his strange eyes.
"You don't know who you are, do you?"
"I know I'm not what they said I was," she said quietly.
"Then you're halfway there."
As night fell, Kael told her pieces of a story long buried by the packs.
Of a bloodline cursed by its power.
A lineage of wolves born with elemental duality—fire and ice, sky and root, light and shadow.
They were not alphas. Not betas. Not omegas.
They were something else.
They were Balance.
And so they were hunted.
Feared.
Erased.
Except one survived.
"A woman named Solen," Kael said, voice low. "The Seer of Ashblood. She vanished after the War of Thorns. Some say she died. Others…" He looked at Luna. "They say her blood lived on."
Luna touched her chest where her scar pulsed.
"I've seen her," she whispered. "In dreams. In fire. In frost."
Kael didn't look surprised.
"She's calling you."
Before he left, Kael stood with his back to the frozen glade.
"You have three days," he said. "Then others will come. Not all of them kind."
"Why help me?" Luna asked.
He didn't turn.
"You remind me of someone I failed."
Then he disappeared into the trees, swallowed by silence.
Luna knelt beside the pool once more.
The moonlight hit the surface, reflecting her eyes—glowing silver, rimmed with frost and flickering flame.
She was no longer afraid of the contradiction within her.
She was both.
And beneath ice and flame… she was more.