The moonlight lingered long past dawn.
Even as the sun began its slow ascent, golden rays brushing the treetops in the distance, the Moonstone Sanctuary remained wrapped in a cool, silvery hush. The night had not fully left—refusing, it seemed, to loosen its grip on Aria and the events of the night before.
The ritual had worked. Caleb lived.
But something was different now. Not broken—just changed. In him. In her. In the fragile space between them.
Aria stood alone in the inner courtyard, where the garden paths curved like veins beneath her bare feet. She touched the deep blue petals of a moonblossom, watching the flower bow under her fingers, dew collecting like tears.
She'd barely slept. Every time she closed her eyes, she saw the reflection in the pool—the flicker of something watching from beyond the veil. The moon's whisper still echoed through her bones: Not the last… the first.
She wasn't just a spirit wolf.
She was becoming something else entirely.
