The wind shifted before the first howl split the sky. Eden sat up straight in her bed, breath caught mid-sleep. She hadn't dreamed this time, no twisted forest, no burning gates, no eyes watching through the shadows. Just silence, thick and ominous, then the unmistakable crackle of something stepping onto her porch. The second howl came lower, closer. Not a warning but a call. Her breath steamed in the chill. The window above her bed fogged lightly, but there just for a second, a handprint bloomed across the glass from the outside. Not claws. Not a paw. A hand. She froze.
Something out there wasn't just watching anymore, it was looking for her. By the time she'd thrown on her coat and boots, the fog had swallowed the trees beyond the road. Eden could barely see the porch, but the air hummed with a strange static like something old had been stirred awake. She didn't call for Kade. She didn't need to because as soon as her hand touched the doorframe, a shadow detached itself from the edge of the trees and stepped into the light. It was Kade. Half-shifted, blood on his shirt, jaw clenched. His eyes weren't their usual molten gold, they were ringed in pitch-black, pulsing.
"Get back inside," he growled.
Eden didn't move. "You're hurt,"
I said; inside.
But she could see the way his hand trembled, the fine shaking of his limbs, not from pain but from restraint. He was barely holding something back.
"What happened?" His gaze snapped to hers, wild and unreadable.
"They're testing the border again. Small ones this time. Wraithspawn, mostly."
Her stomach turned. "They got through?" "One did. I stopped it."
"And the others?" Kade turned, staring into the woods. "Still out there."
A new howl rose. This one was not like the others; It was high-pitched, layered, like three voices crying through one mouth. It made her skin crawl.
Eden gripped the railing. "This is because of me, isn't it?" Kade looked back at her, the storm behind his eyes quieting just slightly.
"It's not your fault." "But it is," she whispered. "I'm waking something up." Something that was buried a long time ago. I've seen it. Felt it. Whatever's locked beneath this town… it knows me."
Kade stepped up onto the porch. Close now. Closer than they'd allowed themselves to be since that night in the woods. His voice dropped to a whisper, barely carried over the air. "You are the last Gatekeeper, Eden." Of course, it knows you. It's been waiting."
Later that night, Eden found herself walking again. Not sleepwalking but guided.
The dreams didn't come anymore. Not when she was awake, anyway. Something was calling her, and she didn't tell anyone, not Kade, not Clara, not even her journal. She just followed. Past the edge of Silverthorn. Down a trail that hadn't existed the night before. The path was marked with roots shaped like hands, gnarled and split, reaching out of the ground like the forest itself was dragging itself up for a better look.
At the end of the trail stood an old chapel with a crooked roof, stained-glass blackened by moss. No bell. No cross. A church for something that never preached mercy. Inside, it was silent. Candles burned along the floor, not wax, but tallow made from bone, melting into a pool of ash. And at the front, seated in the last pew, was a woman. Old. Blind. But her head tilted when Eden entered, as if she'd been expecting her all along.
"I wondered when you'd come," the woman rasped. The last Vale. The one born from both the moon and roots. Eden blinked. "Do I know you?" "No. But I know you. I've known every Gatekeeper before you. And I buried three."
The woman called herself Mother Sela. Her skin was stretched thin over her bones, her face carved by years. Eden didn't want to count. But her voice held power. Like she'd whispered to the shadows and they'd listened.
"You carry the mark of the Seal," Sela said, tracing the air over Eden's palm. The Hollowborn know it. They hunger for it. And soon, they'll come in numbers. Eden shivered. "Can I stop them?"
The woman's smile was toothless. "Maybe. But only if you stop hiding."
"Hiding what?" Sela tilted her head again. "The wolf inside you." The world tilted. Eden stepped back. "I'm not a wolf. I'm human."
"Not anymore," Sela whispered. "Not since the night you touched the Gate."
Eden ran. Out of the chapel. Back through the forest. Through fog and whispering trees and the growing certainty that her heartbeat didn't sound right anymore. It was louder. Heavier. Wrong. She didn't stop until she reached the boundary stone, the one Kade had shown her weeks ago, carved with wards in the old tongue.
She dropped to her knees beside it, her palm pressing into the earth like she could drain the truth out of the soil.
But the earth pulsed back.
And for a moment, just a flicker, her breath turned to frost and her vision to black and gold.
Something deep inside her stirred. Not human. Not fully wolf. Something else. Something older.
Back in town, the attacks intensified. Crows flew in perfect spirals overhead. The river turned dark, animals fled, and children whispered of a woman with no face standing at the edge of the playground at night.
Kade stood before the Pack Council, demanding reinforcements from the Elders beyond the Ridge. They refused.
"Silverthorn has held its own for centuries," one elder said. You are Alpha. You will do your duty.
But Kade knew what they feared. They weren't just holding Silverthorn anymore. They were holding the world back from what lay beneath it. And Eden Vale had just cracked the seal.
That night, Eden dreamed again. Only this time, it wasn't the forest. It was a stone corridor, lit by torches that hissed against the dark.
At the end of it stood a mirror. Tall. Framed in bone, but the reflection didn't show her.
It showed the other her. The one with black eyes and a crown of branches.
She spoke in Eden's voice.
"You've seen the beginning, little Vale. Now come see the end."