"You lied to ."
Magnolia’s voice cut through the silence like a blade honed on betrayal. She stood in the crypt beneath the estate, her bare feet dusted in ash, the hem of her dress torn, blood drying along her cheek. Her golden eyes, so much like their mother’s, glowed faintly in the dim torchlight.
Camille didn’t flinch. "I didn’t lie. I waited. There’s a difference."
Magnolia stepped forward, fury trembling just beneath the surface. "You told the bond between us was dormant. You said it was broken at birth. That’s why I couldn’t feel you. But it’s not. It’s active. It’s been active."
Camille’s expression didn’t waver, though her voice lowered. "Because it was safer that way."
"Safer for you, maybe," Magnolia snapped. "But what about ? I thought I was broken."
"You were protected."
"I was abandoned."
The torches lining the chamber flickered violently, reacting to the weight of her words. Camille’s fingers tightened around the leather pouch hanging at her side.
"There’s more to this than you know, Mags," she said carefully. "If I’d told you the truth, the Hollowfang would’ve moved sooner. They would’ve marked you before you were ready."
Magnolia scoffed. "And now they’ve marked Beckett instead. That’s your grand strategy?"
Camille’s voice cracked. "I didn’t choose him."
"No," Magnolia said. "But you let it happen. You always let things happen and pretend you’re innocent."
Silence stretched between them. The air felt old, stale with mory.
Then Camille took a step forward. "You’re wrong."
"About what?"
"I’ve never been innocent."
The Pact Stone rested on an altar behind them, encased in an obsidian do. Its surface shimred with shifting sigils, languages long dead whispering across its edges. Magnolia approached it slowly, gaze never leaving the glowing object. She hadn’t seen it in years, not since the day Celeste made her swear never to seek it out.
"They say it hums for those who are bound," she whispered.
Camille moved to stand beside her. "It does more than hum. It chooses."
"You an controls."
Camille didn’t answer.
Magnolia turned to her. "Is this what you were protecting from? A stone?"
"No," Camille said. "What it awakens."
She reached into her pouch and drew out the bone scroll Beckett had recovered. It pulsed faintly as if aware of the stone’s presence. Camille placed it beside the do, and the sigils on the Pact Stone surged with light.
Magnolia tensed. "What did you just do?"
"Sothing I should’ve done years ago," Camille replied. "You’re right. I lied. I told you the bond between us was broken. I even believed it. Until I felt it pulse in the Hollowfang cave."
Magnolia stepped back. "You felt it?"
"Every ti you shifted," Camille whispered. "It tore through like a thread being pulled too tight."
The torchlight danced in strange rhythms across the stone walls as if shadows had co alive.
"You never told you could feel ," Magnolia said.
Camille’s voice dropped. "Because when I did... it hurt."
That softened sothing in Magnolia’s face. But only briefly.
"You don’t get to play the martyr," she said. "Not after dragging us both into this. If this stone chooses, what happens if it rejects one of us?"
Camille looked at her and said, "Then only one of us walks away."
The Pact Stone’s do cracked with a sound like splitting ice. Light burst upward, brief, searing, golden. Both sisters staggered back. From within the do, the object floated upward, weightless, humming like a living thing.
It pulsed once.
Then again.
And then, silence.
Magnolia reached out. "Do I, ?"
"Let it choose," Camille said.
Magnolia placed her hand near it. The mont her fingers ca close, the light shifted to a soft green. She closed her eyes as a warmth spread up her arm and settled behind her eyes.
Then Camille stepped forward and touched it too.
Red light shot out, clashing violently with Magnolia’s green. Sparks flew. The chamber groaned beneath their feet, the stone altar cracking as opposing forces collided.
Magnolia’s eyes snapped open. "What the hell?"
"It’s not ant for two," Camille gasped. "The bond was severed for a reason. We’re breaking that rule."
"What happens if it breaks us instead?"
The air split with a loud crack as the stone surged, sending both won flying back. Camille hit the wall first, blood saring behind her. Magnolia struck a pillar, falling to her knees, breath ragged.
And the Pact Stone hovered in place.
Alone.
Undecided.
Later, Camille sat hunched on the chapel stairs aboveground, fingers wrapped around her ribs, blood drying along her scalp. Magnolia stood across from her, arms crossed, anger still simring beneath a thin veil of exhaustion.
"What do we do now?" Magnolia asked.
Camille coughed, tasting copper. "Wait. It hasn’t chosen."
"Or it already did," Magnolia murmured.
Camille looked up. "Don’t."
But Magnolia’s voice remained cold. "Maybe it rejected both of us."
A long pause passed before Camille spoke. "That scroll Beckett brought back... there’s more in it. Pages we didn’t see. Warnings."
Magnolia sat down slowly. "You think there’s still a way?"
Camille didn’t answer. She only stared up at the stormy sky, whispering sothing too soft to hear.
Across the estate, Beckett stood at the edge of the training yard, watching the shadows creep along the hedges. His body still ached, his vision occasionally flickered, but sothing had shifted inside him.
The ash he’d coughed up was gone, but he could still feel it in his veins, like a quiet heat waiting to ignite.
And then, without warning, his vision flashed.
He saw Camille.
Alone.
In the woods.
Bleeding.
Screaming.
He grabbed the nearest wall for support, breath sharp and ragged. The mory wasn’t his, but it was in him now.
Sohow, the bond had tethered more than his body.
It had taken his mind.
And it was still pulling.
"Why is the sky humming?"
Magnolia’s voice was hoarse, barely above a whisper as she stepped into the observatory tower at the north wing of the estate. Her boots were coated in dried blood and earth, the weight of the day still heavy in her limbs. Her eyes, once bright with untad defiance, now shimred with unease.
Camille stood by the glass window, the tower’s circular do offering a view of the desert horizon. The moon was pale behind clouds, but the wind carried with it a strange vibration, a deep, low hum that settled in the bones. In her hands was the scroll Beckett had brought back, newly unfurled and glowing faintly along the torn edges.
"It’s not the sky," Camille said, her gaze distant. "It’s the earth underneath it. Sothing is waking up."
Magnolia approached slowly, brow furrowed. "Don’t start speaking in riddles, Camille. I’m not in the mood for your cryptic priestess act."
Camille looked over her shoulder, eyes shadowed but resolute. "It’s not an act. And this, " she lifted the scroll, ", isn’t a prophecy. It’s a warning."
Magnolia leaned in. The old bone parchnt was nearly translucent now, fragile and vibrating under Camille’s fingers. Strange markings rippled across its surface like breath on glass, symbols too ancient for either of them to na, yet sohow, they both understood them.
"What does it say?" Magnolia asked, the hum rising in her ears.
"That the Pact Stone is not a weapon. It’s a seal."
Magnolia blinked. "A seal for what?"
Camille hesitated. "The blood debt. The one our mother never repaid."
The words dropped like stones between them. Magnolia’s heartbeat stuttered. "You told she gave everything to protect us."
"She did," Camille said slowly. "But not to free us. To postpone us."
Lightning flashed far beyond the ridge, painting the clouds in fleeting fire. Magnolia reached for the edge of the scroll, her fingertips brushing the pulsing surface.
"Camille, what aren’t you telling ?"
Camille turned to her fully now. "There’s sothing buried beneath this land. Not taphorically, literally. An ancient root system older than the Syndicate, older than the Hollowfang, older than anything. Our mother wasn’t just fighting for us. She was holding it back."
"And now?" Magnolia asked.
Camille’s face turned pale. "Now... it’s unbinding."
Down below, the estate shook. Not violently, not enough to send chandeliers swinging or walls crumbling, but subtly, like a breath drawn by the soil itself. Beckett, who’d been standing alone on the periter wall watching the treeline, felt it first. A tremor in his calves, a rumble beneath his boots.
He narrowed his eyes.
"Rhett," he said into his communicator, "we’ve got movent. It’s underground."
Rhett’s voice crackled in. "Confird. South sensor shows a deviation in thermal flow."
Beckett turned, instincts coiled. "This isn’t natural. Tell the pack to pull back from the outer fields."
In the distance, the crops rustled against a wind that hadn’t yet arrived.
Inside the observatory, Camille pressed the scroll against the stone pedestal at the room’s center. The floor beneath them glowed faintly, forming a pattern that spiraled outward, an intricate knot of runes and circles.
Magnolia stepped back, heart racing. "What is this place?"
Camille’s voice dropped to reverence. "A vault. The last one our bloodline ever sealed."
Before Magnolia could reply, the markings surged. Light spread from the pedestal, racing along the floor toward the walls. The tower shuddered, and the glass do above them began to shift, translucent panels rotating to reveal the full view of the star-streaked sky.
A voice, ancient, feminine, not entirely human, whispered from the center of the room.
"Two sisters. One bond. One will carry the fire. One will carry the cost."
Magnolia’s breath caught. "What the hell was that?"
Camille didn’t answer. Her knuckles were white around the scroll. The words echoed in her mind, drawing blood in their certainty.
She turned to Magnolia, voice trembling. "It’s not a warning anymore. It’s a sentence."
"What are you talking about?"
Camille’s eyes filled with sothing between grief and conviction. "The Pact Stone chose neither of us... because it needs both."
Outside, the wind howled across the sand. Ash began to fall, black flakes, slow and soft, as if the sky itself was weeping.
Savannah rushed out of the dining hall as servants shouted for cover. She reached the veranda and stared upward.
"It’s ash," she whispered. "But nothing’s burning."
Rhett appeared beside her, jaw clenched. "Not yet."
She turned to him. "What does this an?"
He didn’t look at her. "It ans we’re out of ti."
He stepped down into the courtyard, his long coat whipping in the strange wind. Beckett joined him, face grim.
"We need to activate the second barrier," Beckett said. "If this is what I think it is, "
Rhett cut him off. "I know what it is. I felt it last ti. The day my mother vanished."
Savannah ca down after them. "Where is Camille?"
"In the tower with Magnolia," Beckett said. "Reading that damn scroll again."
Rhett’s gaze darkened. "Then they need to stop reading and start choosing."
Savannah touched his arm. "You don’t an, "
"I an," Rhett said, "that sothing’s crawling back from the grave. And I don’t think it wants to negotiate."
In the observatory, the room had gone deathly quiet. The light had receded, but the ash falling through the open do above painted the sisters in flakes of black and gray.
Camille turned to her sister.
"I need you to co with . There’s one place left that might explain what’s coming."
Magnolia was still staring at the pedestal. "And if it doesn’t?"
"Then we end it there," Camille said softly. "Together."
Hours later, long after midnight, the sisters stood before the Hollowfang catacomb. The entrance had been buried for decades beneath vines and moss, hidden beneath the ruins of an old stone chapel just outside the estate’s outer wall.
Camille traced her fingers across the old stone archway. "They sealed it after the first uprising. Before I was born. Before you."
Magnolia nodded once. "And now we unseal it."
Camille reached into her coat and pulled out the Pact Stone. It pulsed faintly, like a heartbeat in her palm. She pressed it against the carved sigil above the arch.
The stones shifted. Groaned.
The door opened.
A cold wind blew from the depths, carrying with it the scent of ancient decay and fire. Magnolia drew her blade. Camille stepped forward.
And together, they entered the dark.
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