Chapter 179

Richard

The farther we pushed into the north, the more the land resisted us. Eldric claimed it was the residual pulse of ancient blood magic. Vampire strongholds, built long before any council treaties. Regions carved out in defiance of law and untouched by time. These weren’t just forgotten territories. They were cursed ones.

Roads shifted beneath our feet. Trees bent in unnatural spirals. Sometimes, we moved in a straight line for hours, only to find our own fresh bootprints circling back toward a moss-covered vertebra, massive and sunken into the earth like the remains of something that should not have existed.

Nathan strode ahead, his posture locked and rigid. He kept shying away from shadows that didn’t move. None of us had slept properly since the illusions began, not even Eldric. But Nathan bore it the worst. His exhaustion showed in the stiffness of his jaw, the way his hand hovered just slightly too close to his blade. He was waiting for something to go wrong. He always was. And right now, I didn’t blame him.

The first attack didn’t come from an enemy we could face. It came from the terrain. Dusk didn’t fade. It collapsed. Light drained too fast, and the world changed before we could react. Towers rose where there had been trees. Fog rolled in from every direction, colder than the wind and thick enough to choke on. I tried to shift, but something resisted me. I felt claws break through my skin, and then vanish. I couldn’t find the rhythm.

Nathan struck first, cutting into something I couldn’t see. My own claws sliced air that fought back like silk soaked in ice. No blood. No resistance. Just a weight pressing against instinct.

“Break your skin!” Eldric’s voice cut across the fog. “It’s not real unless you let it be. Bleed. It will force the illusion to shatter.”

I drew a claw across my forearm. The pain grounded me instantly. As the blood fell, the illusion cracked open. Fog peeled away. The towers dissolved into mist. The pines warped back into stone. I stumbled as the world righted itself.

Nathan stood beside me, catching his breath. Eldric stepped into the clearing like it was any other walk through the woods. “We’re close,” he said, his voice still maddeningly calm.

We set up camp in the crumbling skeleton of what had once been a chapel. Nathan coaxed a fire from wet kindling, though it barely reached beyond our knees. Eldric didn’t seem to notice the cold. He sat across from me, watching the flames.

“I knew Serena,” he said without preamble. “Before she disappeared. Before any of this.”

His voice wasn’t reverent or nostalgic. He spoke like a man recalling orders from a mission long past.

“You probably already know she wasn’t just a nurse. Serena was a princess, technically the last living heir of three noble vampire bloodlines. The Crimson Circle raised her with one purpose in mind: to create a convergence, someone who could walk in both worlds. They believed she would be the key to peace, or domination, depending on who got to her first.”

He held my gaze. “Then she chose a wolf. And fled.”

I didn’t flinch. “Amelia isn’t some convergence. She’s not a prophecy.”

“She’s a person,” Eldric agreed. “But that doesn’t erase what she means to the people who want to use her. The Circle sees her as the bridge. A potential weapon, or salvation. That weight changes how others treat her, and it changes her, too.”

He pulled a thin parchment from his satchel and unfolded it carefully. The glyphs shimmered under the firelight.

“They’ll use this. It’s a binding rite, not to chain her physically but to reconstruct her thoughts. They won’t torture her, not directly. They’ll tell her truths. Twisted ones. Serena’s isolation. Her flight. And they’ll weave your silence, your hesitation, into betrayal.”

I looked into the fire. The bond hadn’t snapped, but it had grown faint. It was off, like hearing someone call from a great distance. Sometimes I caught the shape of her thoughts, but never long enough to hold onto. Whatever they were doing, it was working.

“I need to get to her before they rewrite the story in her head.”

Eldric nodded once. “You won’t find her by scent or footsteps. She’s behind layered wards, and the magic used to hide her predates the Kingdom. The only way to reach her is through resonance. But even that’s difficult unless she reaches first.”

“She won’t,” I said. “Not after everything that happened before the gala. I kept things from her, and she knew it. She saw me pull away and prioritize the campaign, even when I didn’t mean to. If she’s alone right now, surrounded by people who are twisting the truth, it won’t take much for her to believe I’ve chosen the Kingdom over her. That I left her behind.”

Eldric reached into his cloak again, producing a curved obsidian blade and a coil of thread soaked dark with old blood.

“We can forge a tether. I know the rituals. I can act as conduit. But it has to be a pact. Blood-forged. Dangerous.”

Nathan stepped between us. “No. Absolutely not. He’s asking you to give over part of yourself to him. Do you even know what that thread is? What it was used for before?”

“I don’t care.”

“You should. You’re not thinking clearly. You’re exhausted. You’ve barely held it together since she disappeared. And you’re risking a lot more than just your body, Richard. You could lose yourself in there.”

“I’ve held it together enough to get this far.”

“And if this breaks you?” Nathan demanded. “If you don’t come back from wherever he’s sending you? If you leave us with no plan and no Alpha?”

“Then at least I’ll have tried. At least she’ll know I didn’t stop fighting.”

Nathan’s jaw clenched, but he stepped back. Not because he agreed, but because he saw I had already decided. Still, he didn’t stop watching me. Not even for a second.

I turned to Eldric. “What should I expect?”

“Pain. Loss of orientation. Possibly hallucinations. The bond may flood you with her memories, or worse, her new ones. You might feel what she feels and believe what she’s being made to believe. You’ll need to hold onto what’s real.”

“What if I can’t tell the difference?”

“Then you trust the part of you that’s always known her.”

I held out my hand. “Do it.”

Eldric didn’t hesitate. He cut our palms, then bound them together with the thread. The moment our blood touched, the air thinned. The fire dimmed to a memory. Nathan’s voice faded until it disappeared completely.

It felt like falling, not physically, but internally. My thoughts folded in on themselves as if I were being drawn inward, peeled layer by layer away from the world around me. My senses collapsed. I couldn’t feel the ground beneath me or the cold air against my skin. I could no longer hear the wind or Nathan’s breathing. I was nowhere and everywhere, suspended in a silence that pulsed.

Then, buried deep beneath all of it, I felt her.

Her heartbeat came first, faint and uneven but still alive. Her thoughts brushed against mine like splinters in the dark. She was frightened, and she was not just lost. She was altered. Something had taken hold of her, warping the edges of her mind. I could feel it. The shape of her thoughts didn’t match what I remembered, but there was something still there, something she hadn’t let them take.

She had not turned away from me. Not yet.

That was enough. That meant there was still time.

I moved toward her with certainty. I ran through the dark, through whatever this place was. And I did not stop.