Chapter 11: Fire in the Blood
The woods beyond the outlaw encampment were cloaked in shadows. Celeste stepped carefully, her breath puffing in white mist as dusk settled over the treetops. She hadn't planned to go far. Just far enough to breathe, to escape the weight of stares and whispered doubts that followed her everywhere in camp.
She hadn't told Kael. He would've stopped her. He always did.
But tonight, something called to her—a whisper on the wind, a flicker in her veins. A word she didn't recognize, yet one that sent shivers down her spine:
Ascension.
It wasn't the first time she'd heard it. In dreams. In the old scroll Kael had shown her. In the fading glow of her mark. It chased her thoughts like a shadow she could never quite catch.
She moved deeper, brushing past thick undergrowth and skeletal branches. The world around her grew still. Too still.
And then—
The trees shifted.
No wind. No animals. Just… movement.
Her pulse spiked. Her mark burned.
She turned around.
A figure stood in the distance, half-obscured by fog and brush. Not a wolf. Not a man. Something in between. Its body flickered, not solid—like smoke caught in a shape it didn't belong to.
It stepped forward.
Its skin was pale gray, stretched tight like parchment over bone. Silver eyes glinted from a sunken face. Shadows clung to its body like a cloak.
"Moonborn," it hissed. "You should not exist."
Celeste stumbled back. Her breath caught.
"What… are you?"
The thing grinned, its mouth splitting too wide, revealing rows of jagged teeth. "I am a shadow of the blood oath. A wraith summoned by those who still remember what you once were."
"I'm not your enemy," she said.
"You are their doom," it replied.
The thing lunged.
She turned and ran.
---
Her boots slipped on damp earth. Tree limbs clawed at her jacket. Adrenaline pushed her faster, but the wraith gained ground with impossible speed. It didn't run—it glided. Every step seemed to cut the light from the air.
She burst into a clearing—familiar. The ancient stone circle. The place where she and Kael had first truly seen each other. Where her power had ignited.
The moment she crossed the threshold, her back seared. The mark flared.
She turned.
The wraith hovered at the edge of the stones, shrieking. But it stepped forward anyway, drawn by her.
Celeste's body trembled. Her arms tingled.
"Leave me alone," she said.
The wraith raised its claws.
"I will return your soul to the void."
Something in her snapped.
She didn't scream.
She roared.
Moonlight erupted from her chest, a wave of glowing power that lit the entire clearing. It wasn't soft. It was blinding. Wrathful. Pure.
The wraith screamed. Its body cracked, crumbled, and dissolved into ash.
Silence fell.
Celeste collapsed to her knees.
---
Kael found her minutes later.
He knelt beside her without a word and pulled her into his arms.
She didn't fight it.
"I'm sorry," she whispered. "I thought I heard something. Something real."
"It was a trap," he murmured. "That wasn't just any creature. It was sent for you."
She shivered. "It called me doom."
Kael's jaw clenched. "The Elders are escalating. Wraiths haven't walked these woods since before my grandfather's time. They don't just track. They erase."
Celeste pulled back. "Then I'm a threat."
"No," he said firmly. "You're a spark."
---
The war tent smelled of fire and pine smoke. Alphas circled the room, voices rising in argument.
"She endangered the entire camp."
"She destroyed the threat before it reached us."
"She should've never been brought here!"
Kael stood between them and Celeste.
"She didn't ask for this," he snapped. "You want to blame someone? Blame the cowards who summon wraiths instead of showing their faces."
The silver-haired alpha raised a hand. Silence followed.
"She destroyed a wraith," she said. "That power alone marks her as something we can't ignore."
The tattooed alpha stepped forward. "And if that power turns on us?"
"It won't," Celeste said.
The room turned toward her.
She stood tall. Her face bruised, her coat torn, but her voice held steady.
"I don't want to run anymore. I don't want to be protected. I want to fight."
The silver-haired alpha's eyes narrowed. "Fight for who?"
"For those who can't. For the ones they'll come for next."
Silence followed. Then a slow nod.
"Training begins at dawn."
---
Dawn came hard.
The training fields were frozen and brutal. The blue-eyed alpha met Celeste with no sympathy. Only expectation.
"No weapons," she said. "You already have one."
Celeste sparred with warriors twice her size. She fell. Bled. Pushed through pain. Her power flickered—bright, dangerous—but she learned to pull it back. To bend it. To own it.
"You feel everything too much," the alpha said after one session. "You think too hard. Be instinct. Be storm."
So she tried.
Every bruise became memory. Every fall, fuel.
And each night, Kael sat with her, cleaned her wounds, and listened.
---
One evening, after a brutal round of drills, Celeste limped to the cliffs overlooking the valley. The moon hung heavy and full.
Kael found her there.
"You glow when you fight," he said.
"I burn when I remember," she replied.
He stepped closer. "And what do you remember tonight?"
She looked at him. "That I used to be scared of this. Of myself. Of you."
"And now?"
"I'm scared I waited too long to stop running."
Kael reached for her hand.
"You didn't."
The silence between them was filled with wind and memory.
"I saw something," she said quietly. "After the wraith. A battlefield. My hands were covered in light. People knelt around me. And that word again—Ascension."
Kael's expression darkened. "We need to find what that means."
"I think it's a place. Or a name. Or a moment that hasn't come yet."
"Then we prepare."
He paused. "I won't let them take you."
"You won't have to."
---
Far from the camp, in a hidden sanctum carved beneath frozen stone, a council of robed figures gathered around an obsidian basin. The surface shimmered with silver light.
"She survived the wraith," one hissed.
"The prophecy breathes," another murmured.
A hand dropped a drop of blood into the pool.
The vision flashed—Celeste, glowing, crowned in moonlight.
"When moonlight spills blood," the high priest said, "the gods of old shall return."
And far away, in her sleep, Celeste stirred.
Her mark burned hotter than ever.
The war had already begun.
And she would be its fire.