Chapter 62: The Bone Path
"You shouldn’t be breathing this air, not without a blade in your hand."
Savannah’s voice cut through the thick silence like flint against steel. She stood at the edge of the narrow mountain pass behind the Callahan chapel, where mist slithered over the broken stones like fingers searching for the living. Her boots crunched against crushed bone and dry moss. Rhett was ahead of her, his jaw clenched, coat flaring with the wind that reeked of rot and silver.
"I told you not to follow me," he said without turning. His voice was hoarse. Tired. But not weak.
"You say that a lot," she answered, stepping into the fog anyway. "And I never listen."
He finally looked at her, eyes rimmed red, not from tears, but rage. "This isn’t some symbolic stroll through ancestral memory. This is the Bone Path. It only opens to blood. Old blood."
"And yet here we are," she whispered, her gaze falling to the carved arch in the mountain wall ahead. Bones fused into symbols. Teeth embedded like ornaments. Ancient. Forbidden.
Rhett moved forward slowly. The deeper he went, the more the ground changed, from gravel to ash, from ash to hardened marrow. Savannah followed in silence, keeping close enough to hear his breath.
"When my mother was buried," he said at last, "they sealed the crypt behind here. Not with stone. With names. Names carved in oath-blood. Ones I thought were erased when Lucia died."
Savannah’s spine stiffened. "The Ghost Alpha."
He nodded. "If she’s alive, the path might react to her memory. Or... to her plans."
They passed under the bone arch. Immediately, the air grew colder, dense like syrup. Their footsteps echoed louder than before. Along the curved walls were etchings, wolves devouring stars, hands clutching broken crowns, and faces scratched out violently.