Eighteen Years Ago: The Palace of Shadows
The palace corridors were no longer merely a house of mourning.
They had become a tomb, echoing with death's icy breath. Even the torches along the walls burned dim, as if light itself were trying to flee from Mortia's wrath.
The Head Midwife and those beside her whispered sealing spells over Ember's lifeless body. The forbidden power—tainted with wolf blood, feral and uncontrollable—still seeped from the corpse. Their hands did not merely tremble; they tangled together in panic.
They had already made their choice.
The baby…
That silver-haired curse had been thrown into the depths of the wild forest, into the wolves' territory—into the jaws of hunger and freezing cold. In their minds, the hybrid was already dead.
Fear clouded their thoughts like a choking fog. They would make the princess's body look as normal as possible. They would mend her wounds with magic. Then they would burn her with a ritual befitting a witch princess. The child would never be mentioned. The secret would be buried beneath ash and soil, forgotten along with them.
It might have worked.
If Mortia had not returned to the palace a full week earlier than planned.
When they were dragged before the Queen, there was no trace of sympathy in their eyes. No grief for a mother who had lost her child. Only raw, animal terror. They did not fear death. They feared what came after—souls torn apart and reforged again and again, condemned to a thousand years of agony for the Queen's dark pleasure.
Mortia sat upon her throne, unmoving as a black statue. Even when told of the death of her own blood, the marble hardness of her face did not crack. Her eyes read the midwives' souls as if they were open books, lingering on the filth they had tried to hide.
"Where is the baby?" she asked.
Her voice did not rise.
It cut—smooth and sharp, like a blade dragged across stone.
The Head Midwife swallowed the massive knot in her throat.
"Th-the baby—"
"Forgive us, my Queen!" another witch screamed, losing all control as she collapsed to her knees. "It wasn't a baby! It was a monster! A cursed demon! It drained the princess's life at birth! It was neither witch nor human—
It was a wolf!"
Mortia did not move a single finger.
With nothing but her will, she tore the air from the witch's lungs. The woman clawed at her throat in silence, her skin turning the color of death before she collapsed, eyes wide with terror.
Mortia turned her gaze to the Head Midwife.
"Speak," she said.
"Do not leave out a single detail."
Ember…
And that wolf.
A forbidden union.
A hybrid.
Mortia had done everything to tear her daughter away from that beast. And now the blood of that same savagery had claimed her daughter's life.
She did not even glance at the frail grave the midwives pointed to. She was a queen—the mistress of blood and magic. She felt it in every cell of her being.
Her blood was not lying in that pit.
It was alive—pulsing like a feral heartbeat deep within the wolves' forest.
With a single breath, Mortia ripped the souls of every witch who knew the truth from their bodies. The grave was sealed with wards so absolute that not even sunlight could find it.
She knew her grandchild lived.
But the time was not yet right.
A fruit had to ripen in darkness before it could be harvested.
⸻
Present Day: The Palace
The sudden darkness that swallowed the arena awakened the ancient hunger within Mortia's soul.
She knew this was no ordinary rebellion. No witch within her fear-built empire would dare cross her so openly. But the howl that followed—
That sound made her bones ache, as if flesh were tearing away from bone.
A powerful wolf…
And a witch capable of damaging the arena itself.
It defied nature.
It should not exist.
For the first time, Mortia's expression twisted—disgust and uncertainty flickering across her otherwise impassive face. She retreated at once to the darkest chamber of her castle. No one could know. No one must know.
Finding a scapegoat was easy.
The executioner witch from the arena was strangled with the very silver whip she had used to slaughter the wolves. Her soul was sealed within the stones—to bear the sin of that night for eternity.
But the damage had already been done.
With spirits leaking from the cracked stones, the arena—and the witch clans bound to it—had lost immense power. Repairs would take days. Perhaps weeks. People whispered of the howling wolves, mocking the fear the witches had shown that night.
They laughed at the cracks in Mortia's once-absolute authority.
Mortia had not subdued the wolves with magic alone. She had used the hybrid's existence as leverage, turning those colossal beasts into nothing more than entertainment.
And now, the seal she had placed eighteen years ago was trembling.
The "monster" she had allowed to grow in the shadows was no longer a secret.
It was a storm on the horizon—
one that would tear the kingdom apart.
And the storm…
was finally coming home.