The trees began whispering before they even crossed the threshold.
Wren paused just beyond the first twisted arch of bark and bone. Branches reached down like claws, their tips brushing the ground, as if warning her to turn back. But her fire pulsed steady in her chest—a quiet, burning drumbeat. It wouldn't let her stop.
"This is it," Veylan murmured, eyes sweeping the unnatural forest.
Cassian bared his teeth. "Smells like old death."
"It is," Veylan said grimly. "The Forest of Ghosts. A place where the Bone Circle binds memory to root and branch. Everyone who enters sees what they most fear—what they most mourn. That's how it breaks them."
Wren's breath fogged in the air despite the absence of cold. "Why haven't they come after us directly?"
"They don't need to," Veylan said. "They let the forest do their work."
Cassian stepped closer to her. "Then we don't get separated. No matter what we see."
Wren nodded. "Let's go."
They stepped beneath the canopy. Instantly, the light dimmed—though it was still day, only a twilight hush remained here. The trees were dense, black-veined, and humming with strange voices. Shapes moved between trunks, barely visible—too tall, too thin, with eyes like glowing cracks.
The first hour passed in tense silence. Nothing attacked. Nothing spoke. Yet the air grew thicker with every step. Like the forest was watching.
Then the forest began to remember.
It started with a sound.
A laugh.
Wren froze. Her heart lurched.
It was a girl's voice—light, familiar, and impossibly wrong. "Wren? Come play!"
She turned too fast.
There, in the hollow between trees, stood a version of herself no older than ten. Hair braided with red ribbons. Mud on her cheeks. And beside her—
Wren's mother.
Not the broken, fading woman from her final days, but young. Radiant. Alive.
"Come home," her mother whispered. "Come home, my love."
Wren staggered back. "No. You're not real."
The child giggled again. "But we're here. You can stay."
Hands reached for her—ghostly, warm.
Cassian grabbed her just in time, yanking her away. The illusion vanished like smoke.
"You okay?" he asked, panting.
Wren nodded, jaw clenched. "They almost felt real."
Veylan's shadows bristled around him. "They were built from your grief. That's how the forest fights."
They kept moving.
But the ghosts kept coming.
Cassian saw his brother—bloodied, snarling, betrayed. Then his father, the Alpha who'd exiled him. Each illusion tried to talk, to reason, to twist.
Veylan stopped dead when a figure emerged from the trees wearing a crown of thorns and the cloak of a dead prince.
Wren took his hand. "Don't look."
He didn't. They walked on.
The deeper they went, the louder the whispers grew. Names. Accusations. Pleas.
Wren's magic began to flicker and pulse, sometimes sparking out of her fingertips. The fire wasn't fully hers anymore—it was responding to the forest.
To the Bone Circle.
"They know we're here," she said, voice thin. "They're getting ready."
"They've been getting ready for centuries," Veylan muttered. "But so have we."
Cassian pointed up ahead.
A clearing glimmered in the near distance—soft light floating in midair, like lanterns suspended in fog.
But between them and that light stood a ring of standing stones—black, cracked, humming with dark sigils.
A gate.
"A ritual circle," Veylan said. "Once we pass through, there's no turning back."
Wren looked at the gate, then at the two men beside her.
"No more illusions?" she asked.
Cassian shook his head. "Only the real monsters now."
Wren breathed once, deeply.
"Good," she said, fire rising in her palms. "Because I'm done being haunted."
Wren stepped through the standing stones first.
The moment her foot crossed the boundary, something shifted. Not in the world—but in her.
A chill coiled around her spine like smoke. Her fire dimmed—not extinguished, but subdued, as if the forest were reaching into her soul and pressing a finger to her flame. Behind her, she heard Cassian and Veylan follow. Three heartbeats pulsed in time.
Then silence.
The whispers were gone.
So were the illusions.
And yet… it was worse now.
The trees thinned slightly ahead, revealing the true heart of the Forest of Ghosts: a glade of blackened stumps, bone-littered ground, and a single withered tree at its center. It wasn't tall, but it loomed. Dead branches curled skyward like a plea for mercy—denied.
And hanging from it, like fruit, were remnants of the past.
A lock of silver hair. A broken pendant. A blood-stained veil.
All suspended by invisible threads.
Wren swallowed hard. "What is this place?"
Veylan stepped beside her, face tight. "An altar. The Bone Circle's first one. This is where they made their pact. Blood for power. Memory for immortality."
Cassian crouched beside a pile of scorched feathers. "Then this is where we break it."
Wren moved toward the altar, her magic vibrating painfully beneath her skin. It felt as if the land itself was pressing back against her presence. The deeper she reached inside herself, the more resistance she met.
"This place doesn't want me here," she said softly.
"That's because it knows you can destroy it," Veylan said. "You're the last witch of the fireline. The Worldfire burns in you now."
"But it's not awake," she whispered.
He met her gaze. "Then wake it."
She stepped to the base of the altar tree and laid her hand on its bark. It felt warm. Breathing.
Suddenly—
A pulse shot up her arm.
Wren gasped as visions slammed into her mind.
She saw a circle of witches, hooded and chanting, standing exactly where she now stood.
She saw the Thorned Bride, shackled and screaming, as they siphoned her light.
She saw a cradle wreathed in shadow.
And in that cradle—
Her.
Then she heard it.
A single voice, deep and terrible and old as ruin.
"The vessel has arrived."
Wren was flung backward. Cassian caught her before she hit the ground, his arms tight around her.
"Wren!"
"I saw them," she gasped. "They want to awaken it through me. They've prepared everything. The altar. The gate. Even my blood."
Veylan stepped forward, the mark on his hand glowing. "Then it's time to burn it down."
Wren stood slowly, wiping blood from her lip. "Not just burn it. Reclaim it."
"Are you sure?" Cassian asked, gaze searching hers. "We may not come back from this."
She looked from him to Veylan. Her heart beat for both, but now it had to burn for something bigger.
"For every soul they used. Every witch they broke. Every life they twisted to feed their power."
She turned back to the altar.
"I will end them."
Wren lifted her hands.
The fire came instantly.
Not as a flicker, not as warmth—but as a roar. A torrent of golden-red flame spiraled from her fingertips, winding around her wrists, her arms, until her body shimmered with power. But this was not ordinary magic. This was the Worldfire.
The altar tree screamed.
Or maybe that was Wren. She couldn't tell anymore. The energy inside her surged with memory—not her own, but thousands of others. Women who had once stood here. Witches whose names were long lost, their bones shattered beneath this cursed forest. The fire remembered them all.
Behind her, Cassian growled low in his throat. Shadows flickered across Veylan's face, his mark now glowing brighter than the sun.
"They're here," he said tightly.
Figures began to emerge from the mist around the clearing.
Cloaked. Hooded. Masked in bone.
The Bone Circle.
Thirteen of them.
Their leader stepped forward. His mask was made of antlers and hollowed eyes. No face beneath, just void. "You've come to return what is ours," he said. His voice was ten voices layered into one.
"No," Wren said, voice shaking with power. "I've come to set it free."
The circle began to chant.
Darkness churned at the edges of the altar. Roots uncoiled like serpents. The pendants hanging from the branches twisted and bled light. A rift opened in the ground—black flame rising, not warm like hers, but cold. Consuming.
They were trying to awaken it. To pour the Worldfire into the vessel they'd carved from pain.
Her.
Cassian shifted into his half-wolf form, eyes glowing. "I've got your back."
Veylan's shadows flared like wings. "So do I."
Wren didn't look away from the Circle. "Then stay close."
She stepped into the rift.
Magic exploded.
It wasn't fire or shadow anymore—it was memory.
She saw herself as a child, holding her mother's hand.
She saw Cassian kissing her in the rain, the night before he left.
She saw Veylan's first smile, quiet and surprised, like he didn't believe he could still feel it.
She saw the Thorned Bride, chained in a circle of salt, reaching toward her with bloodied hands.
"Finish what I could not," the Thorned Bride whispered. "Burn them."
Wren screamed.
And the Worldfire answered.
Flame burst from her chest—not outward, but upward, into the roots, into the altar tree, into the sky itself. The Bone Circle cried out, their spell unraveling as fire cracked their masks and seared their sigils.
Cassian and Veylan moved as one—ripping through the Circle's outer guard, steel and shadow tearing at cursed flesh. But the real power came from Wren.
She walked through the fire like it was wind.
Like it belonged to her.
One by one, the Bone Circle fell.
Some burned.
Some shattered.
Some simply faded, their memories unspooled into smoke.
When it was over, Wren dropped to her knees in the middle of the ashes.
Cassian and Veylan ran to her. She was breathing hard, hands scorched, skin glowing like ember-coal.
"Wren—" Veylan began.
She looked up, dazed but alive. "It's gone. Their hold is broken. The Thorned Bride… she's free."
Cassian helped her stand. "So are you."
But even as the altar crumbled behind them, even as the blackened forest began to breathe again, Wren's fire didn't fully dim.
Because something had awakened in her.
Something older than flame.
Older than vengeance.
And it wasn't done yet.