The night was thick, pressed heavy against the walls of Elara's chamber. Sleep clung to her like a reluctant lover, dragging her deeper than she wished to go. She knew it was coming—the dreams always came. But tonight, the darkness carried teeth.
The nightmare began in whispers. Low voices, chanting in an ancient tongue she couldn't understand. Their rhythm was broken by the crackling of torches, by the sound of chains rattling against stone. Elara's bare feet were wet. She looked down and saw a floor slick with blood, reflecting the pale silver of the moon.
Her breath caught. She wasn't in her room anymore.
The dream carried her to a courtyard, vast and cold, where banners once golden and proud now sagged in tatters. The crest of the wolf—the royal sigil—hung shredded, its threads soaked in crimson. Elara's stomach turned as her gaze swept the bodies. Wolves, humans, children alike, all twisted in grotesque shapes, their throats torn, their eyes staring wide, unblinking, into eternity.
At the center of it all was the family. Rowan's family.
The king—the last true king of the wolves—was kneeling, his fur matted with blood, his arms bound by chains blackened with runes. His crown had been wrenched from his head, trampled into the mud like it was worth nothing. His queen lay beside him, her chest caved in, her fingers still clutching the shredded fabric of a child's tunic as if she had died protecting him.
The child.
Elara's heart seized when she saw him. A boy, barely Rowan's age when the curse began. His small body was limp, his face peaceful in death, but his hands… gods, his tiny hands were burned into claws where he had tried to fight.
Elara gagged. She wanted to wake up, but the dream dragged her deeper.
Above them stood the betrayer.
The guard—once the king's most trusted man—loomed in blackened armor, his sword dripping with the blood of the people he had sworn to protect. His face was expressionless, his eyes gleaming with cold hunger. And in his hands…
The stone.
Leova. The sacred heart of wolfkind. It pulsed like a living thing, crimson and gold veins crawling across its surface, humming with stolen power. The stone had been passed through generations of Rowan's bloodline, the very tether that bound their family to the sacred duty of guarding the balance. But now, it had been ripped free, desecrated by hands that once swore loyalty.
"You failed," the betrayer's voice rang out, jagged and cruel. "You clung to honor when strength was required. And strength will rule now."
The king's lips moved. Elara leaned closer, desperate to hear. His voice was broken, but the words crawled through her bones:
"Your name will rot… your blood will curse… until my lineage returns."
The guard laughed. It was hollow, echoing against the stone walls like a death knell. He raised the stone, and in its glow, the massacre began again.
Wolves were slaughtered like lambs, their cries blending with human screams until the air became one endless wail of torment. Limbs torn, throats ripped, blood pooling so deep it soaked the banners until they dripped with it. The queen's crown was shattered, her eyes gouged out by steel. The children… gods, the children were not spared. Their small cries were silenced with a ruthlessness that seared itself into Elara's mind.
She couldn't look away. She couldn't close her eyes.
And then—she saw Rowan.
Not as the man she knew, but as a child standing at the edge of it all, unseen, untouched. His face pale, his eyes wide, watching as his family was butchered before him. His hands were shaking, his mouth open in a silent scream that never came. His small frame trembled, blood splashing against his clothes as if the nightmare wanted him to drown in it.
Elara reached out. "Rowan!"
But the dream mocked her.
The boy turned his head, his eyes locking on hers. For a heartbeat, she thought he saw her. His gaze was raw, blistered with pain no child should carry. But then his face shifted, aging in seconds, his features sharpening until he was Rowan as she knew him now—scarred, cold, broken.
"You see now," his voice whispered, not from his lips but from the marrow of the dream itself. "The blood that binds me is cursed. And you… you are drowning in it too."
Elara stumbled backward, but her feet splashed in blood that rose higher, climbing her ankles, her calves, her waist. The bodies sank beneath the surface, their faces turning toward her, mouths opening in silent pleas as the stone's glow bled into the water.
Her chest constricted. She couldn't breathe.
The betrayer turned then, his shadow stretching long across the courtyard, his armor gleaming with a sick light. His eyes fixed on her, as though he had known she was there all along. His mouth curled into something that wasn't quite a smile.
"You are not one of them," he said, voice low and guttural, as the stone pulsed in his grip. "And yet… you will bleed as they did. All who touch Rowan's fate do."
Elara tried to scream, but the blood surged higher, filling her mouth, burning her throat. The taste was copper and rot, the weight of generations pressing against her lungs. The stone's glow seared her vision until everything was red, until the world fractured into shards of agony.
And then—she woke.
Her body jolted upright, drenched in sweat, her throat raw as if she had been screaming. The moonlight spilled across her chamber floor, cold and mocking. Her hands were trembling. Her sheets were tangled around her legs like chains.
Her heartbeat thundered in her ears, but it wasn't just her fear—it was his. Rowan's.
Because somewhere, even awake, she could still feel his gaze from the dream. And worse—she could feel the stone's hum, buried deep beneath the earth, waiting.
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