The Forgotten Pulse of the Bond-Chapter 22: Between the Blood and the Oracle

The mirror lay shattered in a dozen jagged arcs across Camille’s floor.

The wind outside had stopped.

Magnolia stood frozen just inside the threshold, her eyes darting from the blood on Camille’s forehead to the shards of glass that pulsed faintly with residual light. Elara stood over her, murmuring a binding incantation under her breath, her fingers drawing runes in the air with a faint trail of green fire.

Camille blinked slowly.

"I saw the end," she whispered again.

Magnolia stepped closer. "What do you mean? What kind of end?"

Camille’s lips parted, then pressed shut again.

Elara’s head snapped toward Magnolia. "She’s still in trance. Don’t question her yet."

"She’s not some ritual token," Magnolia snapped. "She’s my sister."

"She’s something else now," Elara said coldly. "You both are."

Camille swayed where she sat.

Magnolia dropped to her knees beside her. "Camille, I’m here."

Camille looked at her.

And smiled.

But it wasn’t her smile.

It was too still. Too measured.

Elara moved her hand to Camille’s temple. "Memory anchoring five symbols. Don’t speak until the glyph clears."

She began chanting.

The fire grew.

And Camille’s eyes glazed over.

Magnolia paced outside the ritual chamber for over an hour, her arms folded tightly, lips pressed into a line. She hadn’t said a word when Elara ordered the sentries to block the entrance. She didn’t argue when Rhett arrived twenty minutes later, drawn by the scent of Camille’s blood.

But now, as the chamber doors finally creaked open and Elara stepped out her face pale, her hands trembling Magnolia blocked her path.

"What did you see?" Magnolia demanded.

Elara didn’t speak at first.

Not because she didn’t want to but because she wasn’t sure how.

"It wasn’t a vision," she said finally. "It was a memory."

"Whose?"

Elara looked her in the eye.

"Ashriel’s."

The air in the corridor dropped.

Magnolia’s mouth went dry. "How? I thought we sealed him. Locked him behind the gate."

"We did," Elara said. "But memory doesn’t die. Especially not when it’s been transferred. And that’s what happened."

She began to walk, and Magnolia followed close.

"Camille held the gate open. You sealed it. But the bond passed through both of you. Pieces of what Ashriel was... slipped in. Not consciousness. Not soul. Just fragments."

"Like what?"

"Like his final day. His fears. His plans."

They reached the lower hall.

Magnolia stopped her.

"What did Camille see?"

Elara faced her. "The night the first Luna died."

Magnolia flinched.

"She saw the betrayal," Elara continued. "She saw the sealing stone fracture. She saw herself her face kneeling over a corpse that looked like me."

Magnolia stared.

"She’s bleeding past lives," Elara whispered. "And it’s only going to get worse."

Camille woke just after nightfall.

The lights in the chamber had dimmed. The air was still.

Magnolia sat by her side, cloak wrapped tightly, boots by the door.

"You stayed," Camille said softly.

"I always do."

They sat in silence for a moment.

Then Camille reached out, slowly, fingers trembling.

Magnolia took her hand.

"You saw it," Magnolia said. "Didn’t you?"

Camille nodded. "There was a river of fire. Wolves turned to stone. And a man who looked like Ashriel... weeping."

Magnolia frowned. "Ashriel doesn’t weep."

"He did then."

"For what?"

"For her. The one he was meant to love. The one who sealed him."

Magnolia went still.

"And she looked like me," Camille said.

Silence again.

Then Magnolia said, "We have to speak to Elara. Together."

Elara was waiting in the garden.

It was nearly midnight, the moon heavy and red over the treetops. The elder wore no cloak, only robes the color of ash, her feet bare on the frost-glazed stones.

Camille stood straighter than usual. The vision hadn’t broken her.

It had sharpened her.

They approached in silence.

Elara spoke first.

"You both came."

"We need the truth," Magnolia said. "Not fragments. Not theories. Everything."

Elara looked at Camille.

"You first," she said.

Camille stepped forward. "I remember things I never lived. I see people I’ve never met. And I feel pain that doesn’t belong to me."

Elara nodded. "That’s how it begins."

"How what begins?" Magnolia asked.

Elara turned to her.

"The echo."

Magnolia frowned. "What echo?"

"When a being of high power dies through ritual, they leave behind an echo a metaphysical imprint that seeks a similar soul. Camille held the gate. You closed it. But Ashriel’s death wasn’t clean. And now, you’re both hosts for his grief."

Camille blinked. "His grief?"

Elara paced now, voice rising.

"Not his power. Not his intent. His loss. His mourning. That’s why you see fire. That’s why your wolves don’t answer. Because the grief is heavier than the instinct."

Magnolia stepped back. "What does that mean for us?"

Elara turned slowly.

"If the grief matures into memory... you become the gate again. Both of you."

Camille paled.

"So what do we do?" Magnolia asked.

Elara raised her chin.

"You find the origin of the grief. The place it began. You walk into the past he never wanted you to see."

"And if we don’t?"

Elara’s voice dropped.

"Then Ashriel wakes again. Not as a god. But as regret given form."

The moon was black the night they found the burial site. ƒгeewebnovёl.com

No stars. No light. Just the soft crunch of boots through frost and the slow creak of iron as Beckett pried open the sealed passage at the edge of the forest’s shadow line.

Magnolia stood beside him, cloak drawn tight, the mark on her palm bandaged beneath three layers of cloth and a leather wrap. Camille stood just behind her silent, steady, but too still to be calm.

This wasn’t a place they were meant to find.

The trees leaned in like witnesses, branches like claws stretching overhead. The wind didn’t move here. It breathed.

"You’re sure this is it?" Magnolia asked.

Beckett nodded, running his fingers over the exposed stone crest. "The records called it the Weeping Hollow. But no one’s mapped it in over a century."

He stepped aside.

The door was just wide enough for one body to pass at a time.

Rhett emerged from the trees moments later, carrying a lantern that glowed with silver flame Pack-sanctioned light for blood rituals.

"No one follows us in," he said.

Ivy arrived last.

She didn’t speak.

Just watched.

The team descended one by one.

The stairs were narrow and deep, carved into the rock with runes that lit faintly as each footstep touched them. The further they went, the colder it got not natural cold, but something deeper. Like grief soaked into stone.

At the bottom, they found it.

A chamber no larger than a chapel.

Walls lined with bones wolf and human mixed.

A single altar in the center, blackened with age.

And at the far end...

A sarcophagus.

Magnolia froze.

Camille did not.

She stepped forward.

"The First Luna," she whispered. "She died here."

Beckett’s breath fogged. "There’s no record of how she died."

"There wouldn’t be," Ivy said. "The ritual was never documented. Too dangerous. Too... personal."

Magnolia ran her fingers along the stone.

A crest was carved there.

Not the Pack’s.

Older.

A moon broken in half. A gate beneath it. And between them a single eye.

"She sealed him," Camille said.

"Who?" Rhett asked.

"Ashriel."

Silence.

Then Camille dropped to her knees.

And pressed her palm to the lid.

"No " Magnolia moved to stop her, but it was too late.

The runes flared.

The chamber shook.

And the lid slid open.

Inside the tomb, the body was wrapped in black silk, preserved by magic, skin still pale as pearl. But it wasn’t the corpse that made them stagger.

It was the voice.

A whisper.

From all directions.

Not Ashriel’s.

Hers.

"You must not awaken the sorrow."

Camille gasped and fell back.

The whisper continued.

"He does not return through gates. He returns through grief."

Beckett drew his blade.

"Don’t," Ivy said. "You can’t cut a ghost."

"I don’t need to," Beckett muttered. "I need to listen."

Rhett moved to Magnolia. "Are you hearing it too?"

She nodded. "She’s warning us."

"About what?"

Camille rose, her eyes silvering.

"She didn’t seal him because he was evil," she whispered. "She sealed him because he was broken. And if that brokenness reaches a host..."

She looked at Magnolia.

"...it finishes what it began."

The whisper faded.

The runes dimmed.

But Camille kept trembling.

"I know where the next piece is," she said.

"Where?" Beckett asked.

"Not here," she said.

Her voice dropped.

"In me."