Page 16 of Cursed By Fate

Serena

The mountain doesn't sleep. And neither do I.

I was drifting before I even closed my eyes.

Sleep took me not like a lullaby, but like a riptide—pulling me down fast, without warning, without breath. One moment, I was staring at the ceiling above Tristan’s bed, wondering why he’d left me there alone. The next, I was standing barefoot on cold stone, surrounded by silver light and silence so deep it hummed.

The air shimmered with frost, though no wind stirred. The walls rose high and curved like ribs, etched with glowing runes that pulsed in time with my heartbeat. No—notmine. Something older. Wilder.

I reached for my wrist. My mark burned cold.

The crescent moon and stars shimmered just beneath the skin, not ink or scar but light—alive and watching. I opened my mouth to speak, but no sound came. The silence swallowed me whole.

A figure stepped out of the darkness ahead. A woman. Tall, robed in shadows that flowed like ink across the stone. Her hair was copper fire, wild and loose, and when she turned, I felt something lurch inside me.

She hadmy face.

Older. Hollowed out. Tired in the way only wolves cursed for too long could ever be.

“You found him,” she said—not surprised, not kind. Just… resigned.

I tried to move, to speak, but my body didn’t obey. I was rooted. Watching. Dreaming.

Her eyes—my eyes—swept over me like judgment. “But finding him is not the end. It’s only the test.”

Behind her, the walls bled light. Runes flashed faster. Symbols I couldn’t read burned themselves into my memory: a broken moon, a star pierced with thorns, a circle undone.

She stepped closer.

“You want to break the curse?” she whispered. “Then listen.”

A lowhowlechoed through the chamber. It wasn’t Tristan’s voice—but it felt like it belonged to him. Wounded. Angry. Alone.

The woman reached for my wrist, her fingers brushing mine. When she touched my mark, everythingignited.

Visions slammed through me like lightning: blood on ancient stone, two wolves back-to-back howling into a sky split withfire, a hand reaching—failing—to catch another before they were pulled into the dark. Stones, glowing, pulsing—cracking. A silver dagger falling from someone’s hands. A voice:“One must choose. One must lose.”When the dagger hit the stone, something in me shattered too. A warning. A promise. I just didn’t know which.

“No,” I tried to say. “No, I won’t choose that.”

The woman only tilted her head, sad and unflinching. “You already have.”

The chamber shuddered like the mountain itself was waking. Cracks bloomed beneath our feet, and the wind began to scream.

“Serena!”

The voice wasn’t hers.

It washis.

I jerked upright in bed, gasping. My skin was damp with sweat, the sheets twisted around my legs. My heart was a drum in my chest, and the mark on my wrist—gods, itburned. I pulled it close to my chest, as if I could hold the magic in, keep the memory from slipping away.

But it was already fading. Only fragments remained.

A woman with my face.

A voice saying,“One must choose. One must lose.”

And Tristan.

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