SELENA'S POV
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The sanctum had changed.
No longer a prison, but a place of reckoning.
Of awakening.
The chains were gone — burned to ash by the fire that stirred in my blood.
Not rage. Not vengeance.
Something older.
Purpose.
Zack stood beside me now, bruised but unbroken. His gaze met mine, steady.
We weren't captives anymore.
We were being prepared.
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The training began at dawn.
If the sanctum was shadow, the Bone Tree was its heart.
Twisted, towering, roots like bones clawing out of the earth — it pulsed with old magic.
The trio stood guard around it: the Fallen Guardian, the Shade Assassin, the Forest Witch.
And Ravyn watched from the cliff, silent.
> "You will train together," the Guardian said. "But your strength is not enough. You must move as one."
We bled.
We broke.
We rose again.
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I learned to fight with nothing but silence.
To read Zack's movement like breath.
He learned to shield me from pain I didn't speak.
To see past the hunger in my eyes.
We were tested in illusions, forced to relive our deepest fears.
Mine: a mirror, cracked.
Zade: a world where I never existed.
We screamed in the dark — and found each other in it.
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At night, the Witch whispered in dreams.
> "Your past is buried beneath roots and ruin. But truth is not silent forever."
She showed us a map — drawn in blood and starlight.
Leading to a place called Thornwake.
> "The forest remembers what men forget," she said.
"Beneath its roots, the truth waits. But truth is never found without loss."
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Before we left, Ravyn gave me something — a pendant, bone-white, shaped like a fang.
> "It belonged to her," he said.
"The first of your kind. She bled the forest dry to keep you hidden."
I didn't ask who she was.
I was afraid of the answer.
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Zack and I stood at the sanctum's edge — behind us, blood and shadow.
Ahead, the wild unknown.
> "Whatever we find," he said, voice low, "we face it together."
And we stepped into the forest.
Not as fugitives.
But as flames walking into the dark.
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🩸 Endnote
What truth hides beneath the bones?
Will Selena find the answers — or lose herself trying?
For the Mystics, thank you for following every scar, scream, and secret. We bleed ink for you.
--- Mysterious_frnd