Chapter 61: Fire in the Bloodline
"You shouldn’t have followed me."
Magnolia’s voice rang out in the darkness, sharp as flint against stone. Her silhouette stood against the dim torchlight of the underground chamber, arms rigid at her sides, breath rising in short, labored bursts. Behind her, the veins of glowing ore in the cave walls pulsed with a rhythmic heartbeat, as if the earth itself was listening.
Savannah slowed, boots crunching over bones and old dust, her voice low. "You didn’t leave much of a choice, Mag. You vanished during a war council. Rhett was ready to tear down half the estate to find you."
Magnolia didn’t turn. "He shouldn’t have come either."
"I didn’t come for him," Savannah snapped. "I came for you. Because whatever is happening down here, it’s already changing you."
From the far corner of the chamber, Camille stirred. Her eyes were wide, bloodshot, fevered. She was bound at the wrists by a rope made of ashwood fibers and ancient glyphs etched in red. Beckett crouched beside her, wounded and pale, holding a cloth to his side where claws had torn deep.
"She’s not lying," Beckett murmured. "This place... it’s alive. And it’s waking up."
Rhett stepped forward, his presence commanding even in the low firelight. His coat was dusted in cave debris, one hand curled protectively around the hilt of his blade. "What did you find, Magnolia?"
She finally turned. Her eyes shimmered with a golden hue, iridescent like molten sunlight. But it wasn’t just her eyes. Her skin glowed faintly, as if fire lived beneath it. She held out a stone tablet, worn and fractured, with a crest marked in Hollowfang blood.
"I found the truth," she said, voice shaking. "We’re not just descendants of the Hollowfangs. We were bred from them, altered. I wasn’t born with a gift. I was forged with one."
Camille groaned behind her, tugging at the bindings. "It’s the Pact Stone," she hissed. "You touched it, didn’t you?"