Eden didn't tell Kade about the dream. She didn't tell him about Mother Sela or the chapel that vanished with the morning mist.
She didn't have to. Because when she woke up, her reflection wasn't quite her own. The eyes were hers, but rimmed in gold. Not the soft shimmer of hazel catching the light. No, this was lit from within. Burning. Watching. Waiting. She blinked, and it was gone. Almost. But her heartbeat thudded differently in her chest now. Like a second rhythm beneath her skin, echoing from deeper than blood. And the whisper from the dream still rang in her ears: Come see the end.
Silverthorn looked the same. That was the terrifying part. The bakery still opened at six. Sheriff Malden still stood at the corner of Main and Hemlock with his hands on his belt like he owned the air. The river still trickled past the old mill as if it hadn't run black the day before. But beneath the calm, a tension twisted through the streets like smoke from a fire no one dared admit was burning. People watched her longer now. Not just with curiosity, but something closer to reverence. Or fear.
A girl at the diner dropped a tray when Eden walked in. An old man crossed himself and turned away.
And when she stepped into the herbal shop to see Clara, the bell above the door didn't chime. It cracked.
Clara was already waiting. "You look like you saw her," she said softly.
"Who?"
"Mother Sela." Eden blinked. You knew?,
"She's the last living lorekeeper. She's more forest than flesh now. "And if she's speaking to you, it means the timeline's collapsing faster than we thought." "What timeline?" Clara walked to a shelf and pulled down a faded book with a black tree carved into the spine.
"There are two gates in Silverthorn," she said. One is made of stone. One made of flesh. The stone one is buried. But the one made of flesh… that's you. Eden didn't remember leaving the shop. Didn't remember walking back home. All she knew was the pulsing ache behind her eyes, the ghost of her reflection in every glass she passed, and the certainty that her body was no longer fully her own. Something was coming loose. And the moon hadn't even risen yet. Kade found her by the lake. She didn't hear him approach, he was the only one who could move quieter than the trees. But she felt him.
That magnetic pull. The tether between them that snapped tighter every time he got close. "You've changed," he said.
She didn't argue. "So have you." He looked tired. Not in body, his body still looked like carved stone, all power and control, but in soul. Something behind his eyes was fraying.
"You smell like ash and river stone," he said.
"Is that… bad?" "It's what the First Wolves smelled like. Before the fall."
Silence stretched. The birds refused to sing. Even the water stilled. "Kade," Eden whispered, "what's happening to me?"
He looked at her then, not with fear, but with something worse: knowing. "There's a legend," he said. That one day, the Vale line would return. That the Gate wouldn't be metal or magic, but a woman. Flesh-bound. Soul-marked. The Keeper of the Broken Circle.
Her heart dropped. "And what does she do?" "She either saves us," he said, voice hollow, "or dooms us all."
That night, it rained black feathers. It started as a whisper against the windows. Then louder. Thicker. Eden opened the front door of her aunt's cabin and looked up into a sky that wept inky quills.
One drifted into her hand. Not a bird's feather. Something else. The base of it was bone. The strands felt like hair.
Then the screaming started. Not from the outside, but inside. It came from beneath the floorboards.
Kade arrived before she had time to lift the first plank. His shirt was soaked, hair plastered to his forehead, fangs just barely visible between parted lips. He was halfway between man and monster, and Eden's heart stuttered at the sight of him.
"Don't open it," he said.
"I heard something, someone, down there."
"I know. That's why I came." He crossed the room, knelt, and touched the floor with two fingers. Closed his eyes. When he opened them again, they were golden and glowing. "Whatever's beneath your house," he said, "was sealed there for a reason."
"Then why is it awake now?" He looked up at her. "Because you are." They opened it anyway.
Eden refused to walk away. And Kade, cursed, brooding, protective, refused to let her go alone.
The trapdoor groaned like a throat clearing. The scent that rose from below was damp moss, burnt sugar, and something like rusting steel. They descended into darkness. It wasn't a cellar. It was a chamber. Carved in perfect circles. The walls pulsed slightly, like they breathed. Sigils were burned into the stone in languages Eden didn't know, but her blood responded to each one, warming, then cooling, then burning cold.
And at the center of the floor: a glass coffin. Inside it lay a girl who looked exactly like Eden. Only her hair was white as frost, and her body shimmered faintly like heat rising from summer roads. She didn't move. But her eyes were open.
And they were glowing. Eden staggered back. "What the hell is that?" she whispered.
Kade was pale. "It's not what. "It's a who." She looked at him, fear cutting into her breath. "Who is she?"
He hesitated. Then: "She's you. Or she was."
"I don't understand." She's the part of you that was cut off to make you human. The sealed part. The wolf. The key. She's the truth they buried to keep the Gate closed. Eden's legs almost gave.
"And now?" "She's waking up." Back above ground, the storm had passed.
But the town was no longer silent. Crows lined the rooftops, eyes gleaming. Dogs howled in patterns. Children cried in their sleep.
And Mother Sela's voice echoed in Eden's mind like a prayer etched in bone:
"One of you must die… for the other to live."