ELDER IRIS POV
The old book burst into flas the mont I touched it.
I jerked my wrinkled hands back, watching orange fire consu pages that had survived three hundred years in my secret library. The sll of burning magic filled the air, making my wolf senses tingle with danger.
"No, no, no!" I whispered, grabbing my water pitcher to douse the fire. But the fire wasn’t real fire—it was magical protection, warning away from secrets I wasn’t ant to find.
As the last sparks died, I stared at the pile of ash that had once been "The True History of Triple Moon Bearers." My heart hamred against my old ribs. In seventy years of learning oga magic, I’d never seen a book destroy itself like that.
Sothing didn’t want learning about Lily’s true nature.
I pushed my hurting bones up from the chair and hobbled to another shelf. If the clear sources were protected, I’d have to dig deeper. Way deeper.
The pack house shook above as another dinsional tear opened sowhere in Silver Peak area. Through my basent ceiling, I could hear wolves running and screaming. The walls between worlds were failing faster every hour, and Lily was burning herself out trying to hold them closed.
That poor child. Everyone saw her as their rescuer, but I saw the truth—she was dying. Her life force leaked away a little more each ti she used her Guardian skills. We had days, maybe hours, before she faded totally.
But I had an idea. A dangerous, impossible idea that might save her life and our world.
I pulled out my oldest book, the one I’d started writing when I was just twenty. Back then, I’d asked the pack’s most ancient mbers about oga history. Most of their stories seed like fairy tales, but now I wondered if they’d been telling the truth all along.
"Oga magic is creation magic," I read aloud from my own worn handwriting. "Alpha magic destroys, beta magic controls, but oga magic creates new possibilities."
My hands shook as I turned the pages. There—the story old Martha had told about her great-grandmother, an oga who could "step between heartbeats and change what was ant to be."
At the ti, I’d thought it was just a pretty story. Now I realized Martha’s great-grandmother might have been a Guardian too.
The basent door creaked open above . "Elder Iris?" Caleb’s voice called down the stairs. "Are you all right? We heard a crash."
"Fine, dear!" I called back, quickly hiding my book. "Just knocked over so old books!"
I couldn’t tell him what I was finding. Not yet. Not until I was sure.
After his footsteps faded away, I pulled out the most dangerous book in my collection—one I’d stolen from the Alpha’s banned library decades ago. "Oga Bloodline Secrets" had nearly gotten exiled when I was found with it. Alpha Marcus’s father had ordered it burned, but I’d saved it from the fires.
This book didn’t burst into fire when I opened it. Instead, it humd with old power, recognizing my oga blood. The pages flipped themselves to exactly what I needed to find.
"The First Guardian," read the Chapter title. My breath caught as I read the old text.
In the beginning tis, when the barriers between worlds were first built, an oga wolf nad Serena offered to beco the first Guardian. But the magic changed her, splitting her soul across worlds. She beca immortal but scattered, living in all realities at once.
Her offspring carry pieces of her power, but most never awaken it. Only in tis of great crisis does the Guardian magic fully activate, and when it does, the bearer faces the sa fate—to beco scattered across dinsions, losing their link to any single world.
However, the old texts speak of a way to anchor a Guardian’s soul to one world. If the Triple Moon Mark can be reactivated in its original form, it forms a tether between the Guardian and their ho dinsion.
My hands shook as I read further. The Triple Moon Mark wasn’t just about finding mates or regaining pack balance. It was a fail-safe, created by the first oga Guardians to avoid their successors from being lost between worlds.
But Lily’s mark was gone. Used up when she beca a Guardian. How could we restart sothing that no longer existed?
I flipped through more pages, desperate for answers. There—a ritual described in the old oga language, words I’d spent years learning to read.
The Reclaiming can only be perford by one who shares the Guardian’s original magic. The ritual demands sacrifice—the life force of another oga, freely given, to restart the Triple Moon power.
The book slipped from my numb fingers. I knew what I had to do.
I was the oldest oga in Silver Peak, the keeper of forgotten information. My life was already near its end. But my death could give Lily the anchor she needed to survive her Guardian tasks.
Moving faster than I had in years, I collected the ritual supplies. Moonstone dust from my grandmother’s collection. Silver thread spun by oga hands. Herbs picked during the last triple moon ritual.
Everything I needed was here, waiting as if fate had been planning for this mont.
But as I arranged the traditional circle on my basent floor, sothing nagged at . The book had been too easy to find, too handy. In all my years of research, the most important solutions had always been hidden.
I opened the book again, looking more carefully at the pages. There—in the margin, written in different ink. A warning in the old oga script: Beware the false escape. The Reclaiming rite is tainted. It does not anchor—it severs. The Guardian who gets this magic will be trapped forever in the space between worlds, conscious but unable to return to any reality.
My blood turned to ice. The ritual wasn’t a rescue—it was a prison term for Lily.
But then who had written the original text? Who wanted Lily stuck between dinsions?
Before I could think further, my basent window burst inward. A figure in a dark cloak dropped through, landing quietly on my stone floor.
"Hello, Iris," said a voice I hadn’t heard in forty years. A voice that should have been dead.
I stared in horror at the face beneath the hood. It was my sister Elena—the oga who had disappeared during the last dinsional crisis, the one we’d mourned as lost forever.
"You always were too curious for your own good," Elena said, her eyes glowing with unnatural light. "But don’t worry. After tonight, desire won’t be a problem for you anymore."
She raised her hand, and I saw the twisted form of the Triple Moon Mark burned into her palm. Not silver like Lily’s had been, but black as the space between stars.
"The Void Walkers send their regards," Elena whispered as dark magic filled the air around us.
I opened my mouth to scream a warning to the pack above, but no sound ca out. Elena had taken my voice with her corrupted oga power.
As consciousness faded, my last thought was fear for Lily. If my own sister had been turned into sothing evil by the space between worlds, what would happen to our young Guardian when she finally burned through her life force?
And who else in Silver Peak was quietly working for the creatures trying to destroy our reality?
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