> "Some storms you don't survive. Some you become."
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The chains had been shattered, but the air still reeked of metal and fire.
Selene's arms trembled as she lowered the broken manacles from her wrists. The steel links fell to the ground with a sound that felt too loud for the eerie stillness settling over the Frost Plains. Only moments ago, the roar of the imprisoned gods had threatened to shake the sky itself apart. Now… silence.
But it wasn't peace.
No, this silence was the breath before the scream.
Kai stood beside her, shoulders rising and falling as though every inhale was a fight. His claws dripped with the ichor of the divine wardens they had just slaughtered. His eyes—those dangerous, storm-chasing eyes—flicked upward to the horizon, narrowing.
"They're awake," he said simply.
Selene didn't need to ask who they were.
A pressure, invisible but crushing, rolled over the plains, bending the distant grass. It was as if the very air was bowing. In the far sky, shadows moved—too large to be clouds, too quick to be mountains. And when the wind came, it carried with it whispers that clawed straight into her mind.
Daughter of the Moon. Blood of the First Pack. Thief of chains.
Her knees buckled. She heard the voices inside her bones. She wanted to scream but the sound died in her throat, trapped beneath the sheer, smothering weight of their presence.
Kai's hand shot out, gripping her shoulder hard enough to ground her. "Don't give them your name," he growled, voice low, almost primal.
The first god appeared.
The sky tore—not like fabric, but like flesh—and through it stepped something colossal, silver-skinned and haloed in burning runes. Its eyes were two moons, full and bleeding. Behind it, other figures pressed at the edges of the tear: giants draped in storm clouds, serpents made of stars, wolves whose fur was the night sky itself.
Selene's heart pounded. "How many…?"
"Enough to erase the world," Kai said. "If they agree to work together."
The god's gaze locked onto her, and in that instant, she knew—not from logic, but from some primal, inherited instinct—that these beings didn't see her as a warrior, or even as prey. She was… a tool.
"Unbind the rest," the silver god's voice rang out, not in the air, but inside her skull. "The war waits for no one."
Selene clenched her jaw. "And if I don't?"
The god's smile was slow, ancient, and cruel. "Then we take what you would not give."
Lightning exploded in the distance—except it wasn't lightning. The serpent of stars slid through the air, its scales scraping the clouds into ash. Where it passed, the sky went black.
Kai shifted, stepping in front of her. "You'll have to try."
The air between them snapped. For a moment, time seemed to stall—Selene could see every grain of dust in the wind, every ripple in the god's runes, every twitch in Kai's claws. Then the sky cracked again, this time with a sound like an ocean overturning.
And the battle began.
The silver god moved faster than thought, one hand reaching down, each finger longer than a spear. Kai met it mid-swing, his claws digging into flesh that glowed like molten moonlight. The impact blasted a shockwave across the plains, flattening grass for miles.
Selene staggered back, her instincts screaming at her to run—but she didn't. She raised her hands, calling on the bloodmoon's fire. The heat answered, coiling up her arms in crimson arcs until it roared into the air, a pillar of defiance.
The god turned its second gaze toward her.
Pain split her vision. Her fire stuttered, almost went out—until she remembered the chains, the gods' prison, the centuries of silence they had endured. If they wanted freedom, it would come at her price, not theirs.
She hurled the fire.
It struck the god's chest in an explosion that shook the tear in the sky. Other gods roared, their voices a thousand thunders at once. The serpent wheeled toward her. A shadow-wolf leapt from the rift, jaws yawning wide enough to swallow a mountain.
Kai's voice ripped through the chaos. "Selene—DOWN!"
She dropped just as the wolf's jaws closed where she'd been standing. The ground caved in from the force, dirt and stone flung like shrapnel.
She rolled, came up on one knee, and met Kai's gaze. His eyes weren't his anymore—they were the bloodmoon's, glowing red with a light that could burn gods.
"Stay behind me," he ordered.
She almost laughed. "Not a chance."
And then the sky split again.
Not with another god—this time, it was light. A rift, but brighter than the sun, searing even through her closed eyes. From it stepped figures clad in white fire, carrying spears carved from pure dawn.
The gods stilled.
Kai froze, his hackles raised.
Selene realized, with a rush of cold, that she wasn't looking at gods at all. These… were hunters.
And they had come for them all.