*Jiselle*
They led me into the caverns before sunrise, when the air was still thick with mist and the scent of burned pine clung to the stone like memory. Kael didn’t speak as we walked. Neither did the two cloaked figures who flanked me–rogue elders, I’d learned, though no one used titles here. Only roles. You either survived the flame, or you didn’t.
The tunnel narrowed, sloping downward in slow, deliberate curves. Runes glowed faintly along the walls, humming with magic I didn’t recognize. Not Council glyphs. These were older. Wilder. Etched by claw, not pen. Carved in blood, not ink. “Where are we going?” I asked, finally breaking the silence.
Kael looked over his shoulder. His expression was unreadable. “To meet yourself.”
I nearly laughed. “That sounds ominous.”
“It should.”
The tunnel opened into a wide chamber that pulsed with heat. No torches lit the space. Instead, fire burned from deep cracks in the stone floor, casting molten light across the walls. A pool sat in the center–dark, still, and perfectly round, as if carved by something divine. Around it were five stone pillars, each etched with symbols that shimmered faintly when I stepped into the room.
“The Trial of Flame,” Kael said. “Every gifted wolf who survives suppression must face it. Not all return.”
I stiffened. “And you brought me here without asking?”
He held my gaze. “You would’ve come eventually. The fire calls those who carry it.”
My cuffs began to thrum. A slow, rhythmic pulse.
“What happens in there?” I asked.
“You face the truth of who you are,” he said. “Or who you could become.”
“And if I fail?”
“You burn.”
The other two stepped back as Kael extended his hand. I didn’t take it. I stepped past him and knelt beside the pool, watching as the surface rippled beneath my breath. It reflected nothing. Not the firelight. Not my face. Only black.
And then I dove.
The water wasn’t cold. It wasn’t even wet. It wrapped around me like heat incarnate, pulling me down–not drowning, not suffocating–just consuming. Light vanished. Sound faded. And then I was somewhere else.
A burning field stretched out before me.
Ash fell like snow.
I stood in the center, barefoot, unchained, dressed in nothing but a thin shift of white. My hands glowed faintly, sparks dancing across my fingertips.
“Hello?” I called.
No one answered.
Until they did.
Three figures emerged from the smoke. Each one a mirror. Each one me.
The first dragged her feet, her body slumped, her arms bound in chains that rattled with every step. Her eyes were hollow, her voice a whisper. “You let them take everything. You begged. You broke.”
The second walked upright, but her hands were coated in blood. Her eyes gleamed red, and her smile was feral. “You killed them all. The Council. The rogues. Even your mate.”
The third wore a crown of silver and flame. Her posture was regal, serene–but cold. Detached. Her voice rang like a bell. ” You ruled. You rebuilt. But you lost yourself to become what they needed.”
My heart pounded.
“Choose,” they said in unison.
“I don’t understand,” I said. “Choose what?”
Successfully unlocked!
“Who you become,” they replied. “Power doesn’t make the path. You do.”
The broken one stepped forward. “Choose safety.”
The monstrous one bared her teeth. “Choose vengeance.”
1/2
Chapter 94
The crowned one lifted her chin. “Choose legacy.”
And in the center, I stood–unburned, uncertain, unwilling.
“No,” I said. “I choose none of you.”
“You have to choose,” they said, voices rising.
The fire closed in.
“No,” I said again. “I’ll make a new path. Mine.”
My hands lifted instinctively, and the sparks erupted into flame–not red, not gold, but silver–white, searing and wild. The flames caught the broken girl’s chains and shattered them. They reached for the blood–covered one and turned her hands clean. They climbed the crowned one’s robes and melted the crown to ash.
And then I stood alone.
Not empty.
Whole.
But something remained in the air–an echo. The figures may have burned away, but their essence lingered at the edges of my mind. The scars they carried, the truths they represented, weren’t figments. They were parts of me. And in refusing to choose, I had claimed all of them. Not their paths, but their lessons.
I heard the white wolf again. Not in voice. In flame. In breath.
She didn’t speak. She simply watched. Her eyes–piercing and ancient–held something I couldn’t define. Not approval. Not judgment. But a waiting stillness, like a verdict that had not yet been rendered. I felt her gaze pass through every layer of me, reading the decisions I had made, the fragments I had chosen to embrace.
She stood at the edge of the world, cloaked in fire and moonlight, silent as stone yet vibrating with some primal wisdom that vibrated in my bones. And though she did not move, I felt the unspoken question echo between us: *Now that you’ve chosen your path, will you walk it?*
As if waiting for something.
As if deciding.
A breeze stirred the ash at my feet, and the sky cracked open above me, fire cascading down like rain. The heat didn’t burn. It cleansed. Stripped away every last remnant of who I had been before the trial.
And then came the pain.
Not agony. Not fire. But a searing, cracking pressure around my wrists. The cuffs. They pulsed once–hard enough to make me cry out–then split down the center like bark cracking under heat. The runes dimmed. My magic surged.
I gasped.
The ground spun beneath me, and I was falling, pulled back toward the chamber, toward the waking world.
I opened my eyes in the cavern.
Kael was crouched beside me, his face pale, his eyes wide.
The cuffs on my wrists were cracked, the runes dimming.
“You survived,” he whispered.
I sat up, my muscles trembling.
“More than survived,” he said. “You bent the fire.”
I looked at him, and for the first time, he didn’t look like a leader.
He looked like a man staring at prophecy.
But I wasn’t his prophecy.
I was mine.
