The Alpha King had vanished.
He hadn't been ambushed, hadn't been taken in a clash; he had simply walked out of his private study late one night and ceased to exist within the known boundaries of the Nightshade Pack territory. His scent vanished at the perimeter of the ancient oak grove, leaving no trail, no struggle, and no sign of a forced removal. It was as if Kian had stepped from one breath into nonexistence.
“Myra, the Healers are urging you to rest,” Gareth said, his voice low and firm. “We’ve used every tracking method known. The Scouts are mapping the perimeter hourly. We can’t ask this of you. If you collapse, we lose our protective magic entirely.”
Myra gripped the scrying crystal in her hand, the obsidian cool against her clammy palm. She didn’t look up.
“There is no other way, Beta Gareth,” she replied, her voice a strained whisper. “The standard Pack magics—the tracking charms, the sensory spells—they all hit a void where Kian’s trace should be. His essence didn’t just leave the territory; it left the dimension. Whatever took him left no mortal trail. This means we are not looking for a location, but for a tear, a passage, or a nexus.”
She finally raised her head, her gaze meeting Gareth’s. There was no fatigue in her eyes now, only a terrifying, desperate resolve.
“I am performing the Nexus Alignment spell. It is ancient, forbidden, and incredibly taxing. It will not show us where he is now, but it will force the reality to show us the exact moment and location he slipped from the mortal coil. The final point of contact.”
Sage, the Head Warrior, stepped forward, her expression grim. “What is the price for this kind of sight, Myra? Every Elder who has ever spoken of the Alignment says it demands a blood payment.”
Myra managed a fleeting, chilling smile. “It demands a substantial conduit. A fee. I will draw directly upon my life force, bypassing all natural limitations and safeguards. I must anchor the vision across dimensional lines. If I fail, the backlash will be catastrophic. If I succeed, the physical toll will be severe. But the Luna is deteriorating, Gareth. The Pack is losing hope. Every wolf is connected to Kian’s light. We must bring him back, or we will fracture. This is the only path.”
She swallowed hard, dismissing the protest she saw forming on Gareth’s lips. “Stand back. This is volatile. I must do this.”
Gareth nodded once, curtly, before stepping back. He watched her, his fists clenched, knowing he was commanding a ship into a hurricane.
Myra closed her eyes and began the invocation. The language was deep, rhythmic, and guttural—a primal chant of raw earth magic and unseen forces. As the words flowed, the chalk runes on the floor began to emit a faint, pulsing blue light, drawing energy from the deep stone beneath the Packhouse.
She raised her arms, palms upturned, the obsidian crystal resting between them. The ambient energy in the room intensified, crackling with ozone and the sweet, dizzying scent of night-blooming jasmine—a smell no one in the Nightshade Pack had ever associated with the rough, woodsy air of their territory. The air shimmered, visibly distorting the light from the oil lamps.
The energy began to channel directly into Myra. Her dark hair seemed to levitate slightly, pulled by the currents of raw magic. The gold flecks in her eyes, normally subtle, flared suddenly to a blinding, painful incandescence. The veins on her neck and arms swelled, turning a striking blue-black as the magical flow threatened to rupture her mortal vessels.
The pain was overwhelming. Myra gasped, the sound ragged, and she pressed on, forcing the vast, indifferent currents of the cosmos to yield the secret of Kian’s vanishing. She felt the magic scour her bones, demanding more power, more life.
With a high-pitched cry that tore from her lungs, Myra broke through the magical wall. At that instant, she felt a burning, agonizing snap inside her skull. Liquid, hot and metallic, gushed instantly from her left nostril, streaming down her upper lip and chin, staining the floor. The blood payment was made.
The obsidian scrying stone erupted in a pillar of blinding, white light. Suspended above it, shimmering like a mirage, an image began to form.
In the center of the jade steps, a tall shadow was quickly dissolving, the faint, shimmering aura of Kian’s unique Morvane-Fae energy signature—a signature the Pack could feel but never see—receding rapidly into the overwhelming crystalline architecture.
The vision lasted perhaps three seconds. Then, with a sound like a single sheet of glass shattering, the image vanished. The white light died, the runes faded, and the charged air went instantly still.
Myra’s physical body, violently drained of its vital energy, immediately collapsed. She fell heavily to the stone floor outside the perimeter of the now-inert circle, the dark, rich blood now pouring from both nostrils and staining the chalky dust.
“Myra!” Gareth’s controlled exterior shattered. He was at her side in a split second, followed closely by Sage.
“Healer! Get the Head Healer here now!” Gareth roared, his voice thick with raw panic, his wolf desperately wanting to fix the fragility of the woman in his arms.
Sage, the pack healer gently turned Myra’s head, trying to slow the flow of blood, her touch surprisingly tender. “She’s breathing. Pulse is weak but stable. The magic didn’t kill her, but it nearly drained her core. We need to stabilize her immediately.”
They moved her gently to a cot. The Healer arrived quickly, working with poultices and calming enchantments to slow the haemorrhaging and stabilize her pulse. Gareth stood guard, his eyes fixed on her pale, drawn face, the fear for her life momentarily eclipsing the panic of the Alpha’s disappearance.
It was almost ten minutes later when Myra finally stirred. She coughed, a dry, rattling sound that tore at her throat, and her eyelids fluttered open. Her eyes, still shining with a dangerous, faint gold, were instantly focused on the memory of the vision, not the pain of her body.
“I… I saw it,” she rasped, her voice barely a thread. “The spell anchored. I saw the passage.”
Gareth leaned over her, his immense strength held in check by sheer willpower. “What was it, Myra? A den? A hideout? Where is he being held?”
Myra tried to shake her head, the movement producing a dizzying wave of weakness.
“No, Gareth. It’s not a prison. It’s not of this world.” She pushed weakly against the Healer’s administering hand. “It was a gate. A door… immense, made of shining rock and liquid light. The magic there… it’s untouched. It’s pure, cold power.”
She struggled to pull the fragmented, ancient knowledge gleaned from the spell back into her mortal consciousness. The terror of the sight warred with the knowledge of its identity.
“The river was gold,” she whispered, her voice a plea for understanding. “The towers were silvered ice. The sky held two moons.”
She grabbed Gareth’s tunic with a desperate, sudden strength, her eyes locking onto his.
“I know what that place is. No mortal wolf, no human, no ordinary magic can create such a place. It exists outside the territories, outside of our understanding, beyond the veil itself.”
The blood was still tacky on her face, and her next words were delivered with a final, chilling clarity that silenced the entire hall.
“Kian is gone. He didn’t step into a den, he stepped through a barrier. He found a doorway to a land of myth.”
She looked at the assembly—Gareth, Sage, the Elders—each face a mask of shock and bewilderment.
“The place I saw him enter… it is the hidden realm. It is the forbidden legends whispered in the oldest lore. It is the door to the Fae World.”
A profound, stunned silence descended upon the Nightshade Pack. Every wolf who heard the words felt the earth shift beneath their feet. The Alpha King was gone, pulled from the mundane world of territory and pack laws, and taken into a realm that, until that moment, they had only believed to exist in ancient, fantastical tales.