Page 58 of Fated Wolf's Redemption

SOPHIA

The heartbeat of the gate is louder now. Not just heard, but feels like standing too close to a subwoofer set to some ancient, deadly frequency. The mountain compound pulses with it, steady as a drumbeat marking the slow march to something catastrophic.

Lucas and I stand just inside the dais chamber. The others scan every corner, every glyph, and every passage branching out from this monstrous heart. But I can’t move. Not yet. My gaze is fixed on the glyph pattern carved into the stone surrounding the dais.

“It’s not containment,” I murmur, crouching and running my fingers just above the etched lines. The glyphs twist in on themselves, the curves jagged, the energy wrong in a way that makes my skin crawl and my bones ache.

Lucas’s shadow falls over me as he steps close. “You recognize it?”

“Parts of it. It’s... it was a banishment seal. Ancient. Windwoven.” I swallow hard, my voice thick. “But they altered it. Not sloppily. Deliberately. The inversion isn’t accidental. It’s designed to anchor.”

“Anchor?” he echoes, eyes narrowing.

“To this plane,” I say. “They’re not just trying to open the gate. They want to make it permanent. Fixed. Not a door, but a doorframe.”

Lucas crouches beside me, jaw clenched as he studies the pattern. “Shit. So the gate can’t just be closed. It has to be broken.”

I nod. “And if it’s anchored… that’s going to take more than glyphs and blood.”

He doesn’t flinch. One of the things I love—did I just say love?—about this wolf is, he never does. “Then we bring the storm.”

We move on; the others falling into formation again. Max and Kylie peel off at the first branch to sweep for movement, Kylie muttering something about playing exterminator. Oscar has rejoined us, but hangs back near the entrance to cover our retreat. If it comes to that. I’m not sure anyone believes we’ll be leaving the way we came in. I know I sure as hell don’t.

The corridor narrows, walls pressing in. The air here is colder, sharp with iron and something else—something that smells like wet stone and burnt ozone. My skin prickles. Lucas’s hand stays close to the small of my back. Not pushing. Not leading. Just... there.

“I don’t like this,” I whisper.

He doesn’t speak, but his hand brushes lower, fingers grazing the hilt of the dagger I carry at my thigh. Just checking. Just grounding me—reminding me, I am not alone nor am I unarmed.

We round a bend and enter another chamber—smaller with a lower ceiling; its walls covered in the same spiraling glyphs but with one major difference. There’s something on the floor.

Lucas steps forward first, blade drawn. I trail behind him and then stop cold.

It’s a body—or it was. The thing lying in the center of the room used to be wolf, maybe, or perhaps one of the Crimson Claw. But now it’s twisted, elongated in places it shouldn’t be. The rib cage is too wide, the limbs too long. Dark fluid has matted its fur, and its claws are blackened and fused. Its eyes are open, glazed—but still moving. Twitching. There’s no breath. No pulse. But the muscles beneath the skin spasm, like something else is trying to make it move.

“Oh hell no,” I mutter.

Lucas crouches beside it, inspecting the chest. “No visible incision.”

“That’s because it wasn’t created. Someone changed it. This isn’t biological reanimation. This is ritual magic. Anchored in tissue.”

He doesn’t look up. “Are you sure about that?”

I point to the glyph burned into the creature’s sternum. “That’s a living rune. It only activates in proximity to power. Like mine. Or yours.”

The creature’s paw twitches again. This time, the claw jerks upright, then collapses.

Lucas rises. “We burn it. Now.”

I don’t argue.

He pulls a flash rod—a kind of powerful electronic flame starter with accelerant—from his belt, cracks it, and tosses it onto the creature. Light floods the space, a violet-white burst that sears the air. The body jerks once, violently, and then goes still. The smell is worse than anything I’ve ever known—singed hair and burnt corruption.

We leave it behind.

Back in the corridor, Lucas radios Kylie. “You find anything?”

“Two more chambers, empty. But it smells like something passed through not long ago. Max is marking the glyph trails.”

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