The bite mark burned through three layers of bandages.
Selene sat bolt upright in their makeshift tent, her breath coming in ragged gasps. The dream clung to her like cobwebs...endless corridors of pulsating flesh, a voice whispering this is what we are, and always, always that song floating just beyond reach.
Beside her, Kael slept unnaturally still, his shadows coiled tight around his form. Since taking responsibility for Lirya, he'd stopped breathing in his sleep. She wasn't sure he'd noticed yet.
A small, cold hand touched her wrist.
Lirya crouched at the tent flap, her mismatched eyes reflecting moonlight. "You heard it too," she whispered.
Not a question.
Selene peeled back the bandages. The bite had developed concentric rings of silver scarring, pulsing faintly. "What is this?"
The child's smile held too many teeth. "A door."
Then...
The ground moved beneath them.
Not an earthquake. Something worse. Something alive.
Kael was on his feet before the first tremor ended, shadows lashing. "The ruins."
They found the survivors clustered at the edge of the crater where the altar had stood. The earth churned like boiling water, bones rising to the surface in jagged splinters. Not random fragments...architecture.
The oldest warrior crossed herself. "It's rebuilding itself."
Lirya giggled.
Selene grabbed the child's shoulders. "How?"
Her answer came in a singsong: "Because you dreamed of home."
The Marking's Price
Kael pulled Selene aside as dawn broke. His shadows kept twitching toward Lirya, who played with a dead scorpion like it was a doll.
"This isn't containment," he growled low enough that only Selene could hear. "She's using you."
Selene flexed her marked hand. The silver scars had spread to her wrist overnight. "I know."
The admission hung between them. She'd felt it since the bite...the subtle pull, the way her shadows moved differently around the child. Like iron filings drawn to a magnet.
Kael's jaw tightened. "Then why..."
"Because she's also right." Selene nodded to where Lirya now traced symbols in the dirt...the same ones from Selene's visions. "The altars weren't prisons. They were schools. And we..." She touched her scars. "We're the failed students."
A shadow passed over Kael's face. Not his magic...actual doubt. "That thing is not a child."
"No." Selene watched Lirya lick the scorpion's stinger without flinching. "But she's not what we feared either."
The ground trembled again.
Bones slotted together with audible clicks.
The First Lesson
Lirya taught them at moonrise.
She'd dragged Selene and Kael to the half-rebuilt altar, where the bones now formed a perfect archway leading into darkness. The survivors kept their distance, except for the old warrior...Mara...who refused to let her granddaughter out of sight.
"Watch," Lirya commanded.
She placed her small hand against a femur jutting from the arch. The bone bloomed under her touch, sprouting veins, then muscle, then patches of fur. For three heartbeats, it lived again as part of some great beast. Then it crumbled to dust.
Mara made a choked sound. "Moon's mercy."
"No moon," Lirya corrected. She pressed Selene's marked hand to the next bone. "Just blood."
The moment Selene's scars touched the arch, the world shifted.
Suddenly she stood in a thriving village, shadow wolves moving freely among normal pack members. No fear. No whispers. Just children with faint markings learning to shape darkness into tools.
And at the center...
Two figures on a dais. Alaric, broad-shouldered and solemn. And beside him...
A young woman who shared Lirya's smile.
"We were the first twins," Lirya's voice whispered through the vision. "The first to share the gift."
Then...
Blood. Betrayal. A knife in the dark.
Selene wrenched free with a gasp. The bone beneath her fingers now bore her teeth marks.
Lirya patted her cheek. "Now you understand."
Kael's shadows formed a barrier between them. "Understand what?"
The child's eyes gleamed. "Why Alaric really locked me away."
He wasn't afraid of the First Shadow's power.
He was afraid of sharing it.
The Survivors' Choice
Mara confronted them at first light.
"She's teaching the old ways." The warrior's hands trembled around her spear. "The ones that got my grandmother executed."
Selene's bite mark pulsed. She'd seen those executions in her dreams...shadow wolves dragged to altars, their markings burned away with white fire. "They were purging the knowledge."
"And now it's back." Mara's gaze darted to where Lirya braided a doll from scorpion tails. "What happens when she finishes rebuilding that?"
Kael's silence spoke volumes.
The altar grew daily. More bones rose from the earth, each touch from Lirya or Selene adding another piece. The survivors split into factions...those who feared it, those who worshiped it, and those, like Mara, who remembered just enough to be terrified.
That night, Selene dreamed of the twin's knife plunging into her sister's chest.
And when she woke up screaming...
The archway stood complete.
Lirya waited at its threshold, her hand outstretched. "Ready for lesson two?"