Chapter 48. The Alpha’s Grave

The battlefield demanded no names. It swallowed every life the same, leaving naught but ash and silence in its wake. Far to the east, the embers of Hollowkeep still whispered—tiny sparks blinking like dying stars against the charcoal sky. Black smoke curled in ragged banners across the canopy, as though torn from a god’s funeral pyre and dragged by unseen hands through the heavens. In the shallows of the Ebonwild—a forest ancient beyond memory, its roots tangled deeper than law or flame—the survivors of the Thorn Pact gathered beneath bowed branches. Their eyes were rimmed with ash, their throats raw from howling into the dark. Limbs trembled with grief and exhaustion, yet they stood in reverent silence, each breath a prayer to ghosts unseen.

Aeryn knelt beside a single figure. Vexa lay alone amid pine needles, her final struggle’s lifeblood dark against the fragrant bed. She had not died screaming—not with fire clenched in her fists or a desperate plea on her lips—but turned