Sacred Waters
Kieran POV?
?The Sapphire Basin lived up to its name. The water was a stunning, glowing blue, illuminated from the depths by phosphorescent algae. It looked like a pool of liquid starlight.
But it was the patrons that stopped my heart.
On the far bank, a Thunder-Boar, a creature the size of a carriage with tusks that crackled with static electricity, was knee-deep in the water, drinking heavily.
Just ten feet away from it, a pack of Velidraptors, sleek, feathered hunters that usually tore boars to shreds, were preening their plumage and splashing in the shallows like ducks.
To my left, creatures I had never seen before, a massive turtle floating near the surface, looking like a drifting island. Something looking like a black feline was actually sleeping on the turtle’s shell, its tail twitching lazily in the water.
“What in the hells...” Mara murmured, her eyes wide.
“It’s a truce,” Silas realized, his voice filled with awe. “A watering hole truce. Like the Savannah, but... magical.”
I watched as a smaller, deer-like creature with six antlers nervously approached the water, squeezing in between two massive, armored lizards. The lizards didn’t even blink. They just shifted slightly to give it room.
It was surreal. In the world outside, these creatures would be tearing each other apart. Here, under the glow of the Forbidden moon by the lake, they were just neighbors.
A large, reptilian head surfaced near the bank closest to us, a River Drake. It swiveled its yellow eyes toward us, blinking slowly. It let out a low, bubbling hiss, tasting the air. It smelled us. It knew we were intruders.
Torin shifted his weight, the Grav-Hammer humming.
“Stand down,” I ordered softly. “If we draw weapons, we break the peace. If we break the peace, every single thing in this basin could turn on us.”
I stepped out from the ferns.
I walked slowly, deliberately, keeping my hands visible and away from my sword. I projected calmness, suppressing my Alpha aura until it was just a low, non-threatening hum.
The River Drake watched me. The Thunder-Boar stopped drinking and raised its head, ears twitching. The feline on the turtle opened one glowing purple eye.
I didn’t challenge them. I walked to the edge of the water, knelt, and uncorked my canteen.
The tension in the air was thick enough to cut with a knife. I was kneeling with my back exposed to a dozen monsters that could swallow me whole. It was terrifying. It was exhilarating.
I filled the canteen. The water was cool against my fingers.
I corked it, stood up, and bowed my head slightly to the River Drake.
The Drake snorted, sending a spray of water into the air, and sank back beneath the surface. The Thunder-Boar went back to drinking. To my surprise, the truce held. Thank the Moon Goddess for that.
I turned back to the pack, seeing the relief wash over their faces.
“Fill up,” I said quietly. “One at a time. Watch the tree line, but do not engage unless attacked. We are guests here.”
As Kael crept forward, the last to fill his waterskin, looking at the monsters with a mixture of terror and delight, I looked out over the glowing water.
The Sapphire Basin remained a tableau of impossible peace as we backed away, step by agonizingly slow step. Only when the heavy fronds of the giant ferns closed behind us, obscuring the glowing blue water, did Kael finally exhale.
“I feel like I just walked through a dragon’s mouth without being chewed,” he whispered, wiping sweat from his forehead. “Did you see the size of that turtle?”
“Keep moving,” I ordered, my voice low. “The truce probably ends at the water’s edge. We are back in the hunting grounds now.”
We pushed deeper into the Forbidden Lands.
If the outer rim could be described as a graveyard, the interior was a jungle fueled by wild magic.
The canopy overhead was so thick it blocked out the stars, replaced by a natural ceiling of bioluminescent fungi that hung like chandeliers, casting pale glows in different shades of pastels over everything.
The air here was different, heavier, charged with a static electricity that made the hair on my arms stand up. It smelled of ozone, crushed pine, and something ancient and sweet, like rotting orchids.
It was mesmerizing.
“I see why they call it the Forbidden Lands,” Elara murmured, consulting her compass, which was spinning lazily, confused by the magnetic anomalies of the wild magic. “It’s beautiful. In a terrifying, ‘everything wants to kill you’ sort of way.”
“It’s overgrown,” Torin noted, using the haft of his Grav-Hammer to push aside a vine as thick as a man’s torso. “Too overgrown.”
He was right.
We had been walking for an hour when the trees began to give way to stone. At first, I thought they were natural rock formations, jutting teeth of granite rising from the moss.
But then I saw the archway.
It was massive, easily thirty feet high, carved from white marble that had been stained grey by time and elements.
Or what looked like time. Roots twisted through the stonework like constrictor snakes, cracking the masonry.
Moss draped over the carvings like heavy velvet curtains, obscuring the details.
“Ruins,” Jax whispered, his dark eyes scanning the shadows of the broken structure. “Old ones.”
I walked up to the archway, running a gloved hand over the cold stone. I brushed aside a layer of thick, spongy moss to reveal the carving beneath.
It was a wolf’s head, stylized, regal, howling at a crescent moon.
A chill went through me that had nothing to do with the night air.
“Not old,” I said, my voice rough. “These aren’t ancient ruins, Jax. This is… this was a city.”
“Impossible,” Kael scoffed, looking at a wall that had been completely swallowed by the roots of an Ironwood tree. “Look at the weathering of the structures, boss. Look at the root growth. This place looks like it’s been abandoned for at least three hundred years.”
“It’s only been eight,” I corrected, staring at the shattered crest of the White Wolf Kingdom.
The realization hit the pack like a physical blow.
The war that had destroyed the Central Lands happened less than a decade ago. I was seventeen when the fires burned.
But the Wild Magic that had flooded this place after the genocide hadn’t just changed the wildlife; it had accelerated the earth itself. It had aged the corpse of a kingdom centuries in a matter of years, turning homes into tombs and palaces into jagged, moss-covered hills.
“We need to make camp,” I said, forcing myself to look away from the tragic beauty of the archway. “We can’t navigate this terrain in the dark without risking a broken leg or walking into a nest. We find a defensible spot within the ruins.”
Everyone agreed and we found what used to be a great hall, now roofless and open to the fungi-lit canopy.
The walls were high enough to offer protection from the wind and wandering predators, and the floor was a carpet of soft, thick clover.
“Perimeter,” I ordered.
The subpack moved with the efficiency of breathing.
Juno immediately began setting tripwires at the entry points, using small, alchemical charges that would flash-bang anything trying to sneak in.
Jax took the high ground, scaling a crumbled pillar to keep watch.
Mara cleared a circle in the center, her daggers flashing as she cut away the brush.
Torin sat near the entrance, a silent, unmovable boulder, his hammer resting across his knees.
Within minutes, we had a small, smokeless magical fire, from fire crystals, crackling in the center of the ruin.
I sat on a fallen block of marble, unbuckling the strap of Storm-Breaker and laying the sword across my lap.
Elara handed me a strip of dried meat. “Eat, Kieran. You’re brooding.”
“I am thinking,” I corrected, taking the food.
“You’re thinking about the Rogue,” she said, sitting down across from me. “And you’re thinking about this place.”
I looked around the ruin. In the flickering light of the fire, the shadows danced over the broken stones.
“She lives here,” I said, gesturing to the darkness beyond the walls. “How? How does a single wolf survive in a place that aged a city to dust in eight years?”
“She’s adaptable,” Silas said, cleaning his short sword. “We saw that at the bog. We saw it at the bridge. She doesn’t fight the land; she uses it.”
“She used wind magic, right?” Kael added, his mouth full of dried apple. “At the bridge? When she jumped? I swear I saw the air ripple under her paws. And also against that aberration at the River Edge.”
“Wolf magic is physical,” Mara argued, sharpening her blade. “We have strength, speed, regeneration. We don’t do… wind.”
“She does,” I said, the memory of our sync playing in my mind. The way she had anticipated the fire breath. The way she had blasted the air into the beast’s lungs. “She’s different. She’s not Valdoran.”
“A remnant?” Jax called down from his perch. “A survivor of the White Wolves?”
“They were all wiped out,” I said automatically. That was the history we were told. The Draconians and Vampires had been thorough. “But… if anyone could survive this place, it would be one of them. This was their home. They were the keepers of the magic here.”
I pulled out the map Elian had given me, tracing the line toward the Mirror Lake.
“We don’t even know her name,” I murmured.
“Does it matter?” Torin rumbled from the doorway. “She saved your life. She saved Jax. She fights like a demon and moves like a ghost. Name or no name, she’s worth finding.”
“She is,” I agreed, a fierce determination settling in my chest.
I looked up at the moon, visible through the shattered ceiling of the ruin. Somewhere out there, amidst the giant flowers and the ancient-new ruins, she was sleeping. Or hunting.
“Get some rest,” I told the pack. “First light, we move for the Mirror Lake. And keep your eyes open. If the ruins are this overgrown, I don’t want to know what’s living in the basement.”
The jungle hummed in response, a chorus of clicks, chirps, and distant roars. The Forbidden Lands were alive, and they were watching us.