The Forgotten Pulse of the Bond-Chapter 27: Descent into Shadowlow Valley

They departed at first light, when the world still held its breath.

Shadowlow Valley lay two days south beyond the jagged teeth of Winter’s Spine an ancient range cloaked in fog and wrapped in old legends. No path led directly to it. You had to feel your way there, through silence and instinct, and trust that the bones beneath the moss would not rise to stop you.

The resistance moved as one: twenty-four wolves, five mages, and a single Gatekeeper.

Magnolia led them.

Camille followed.

But it was the path that led them all.

By midday, they had passed the last of the border sentries.

No more Pack outposts.

No more help.

The air changed slowly, turning from crisp to cold to bone-deep ache. The forest grew denser. The trees wider. Everything felt older here like the ground remembered.

Camille walked silently beside Magnolia, her hood pulled low. The Keeper moved behind them, his robes never touching the earth.

"You feel it?" he asked softly.

Magnolia nodded. "It’s pulling us."

Beckett caught up from the rear flank. "We lost three trails behind us. Something’s moving."

"Wolves?" Rhett asked.

Beckett shook his head. "No. Something else."

Camille stopped walking.

Her breath caught.

And the mark on her chest pulsed once.

"They’re watching."

By nightfall, they reached the edge of the valley.

It dropped suddenly one moment, thick forest. The next, nothing but fog.

Below, cliffs stretched down into silver darkness, and beyond them: ruins. Endless, broken, jagged ruins. Not of cities, but of something far more ancient stones shaped like gates, arches that led to nowhere, symbols too old for even Elara to read.

"This was the first seal," the Keeper said, voice almost reverent.

Rhett crouched at the edge. "It’s quiet."

"Too quiet," Beckett muttered.

Magnolia pointed toward the broken obelisk at the valley’s center. "That’s where we go."

Camille’s eyes were distant. "No. The Fang isn’t in the center. It’s beneath the ashes."

"What ashes?" Elara asked.

Camille closed her eyes.

And whispered:

"The Luna who burned herself to seal it."

They made camp on the ridge.

Guards rotated in pairs.

But no one slept.

Not truly.

Because the dreams came for everyone now.

Camille wasn’t the only one haunted.

Magnolia woke at second bell, cold sweat on her skin, the echo of a scream still ringing in her mind.

Across the fire, Beckett stirred.

"You heard it too," he said.

She nodded.

Elara joined them minutes later.

"Memory’s getting stronger."

"It’s not just memory," Magnolia said. "It’s... looking for something."

Camille emerged from her tent, pale, eyes glassy.

She looked at Elara.

"It’s testing us."

Elara frowned. "The Fang?"

"No," Camille whispered. "The valley.

By dawn, the group moved again slowly, carefully.

The terrain shifted without warning: stone turned to salt, roots turned to bone.

Every step closer to the center left something behind.

By midday, one of the younger wolves screamed and kept screaming.

They found him kneeling beside a stone pillar, his eyes white, whispering a name no one knew.

Camille knelt beside him.

"Do you see her?" she asked.

He nodded.

"She’s in the flames," he said. "She’s singing."

Magnolia pulled Camille back.

"Elara?" she called.

The mage shook her head. "The valley’s opening."

"Opening what?"

Elara looked at Camille.

And said, "Her."

They stopped walking that afternoon.

Not by choice.

The valley refused their steps.

Every path forward reformed behind them.

Every trail curved.

They were being funneled.

Camille stood on the ruins of a broken arch, arms wrapped around herself.

"She’s here," she whispered.

"Who?" Magnolia asked.

"The First Luna."

Beckett joined them. "That’s impossible."

Camille turned slowly.

"No," she said. "It’s memory. But it’s alive."

That night, the fog closed in.

Wolves whimpered in their sleep.

Even the Keeper grew still.

Magnolia sat by the fire, staring into the flame, knowing something was coming.

And when Camille approached eyes glowing faintly red she knew it had already begun.

"We’re not here to find the Fang," Camille said.

"We’re not?"

"We’re here to be judged by it."

The Fang was not a blade in the way they had imagined.

It wasn’t steel. It wasn’t even tangible not entirely.

It was a shape in the mist. A ripple in the valley floor where no stone dared settle, where no roots would grow. The Keeper called it the Hollow Point the mouth of the memory wound.

Camille stood at its edge.

Barefoot.

Silent.

As though she were waiting to be swallowed.

Magnolia approached slowly, Beckett and Elara behind her. The other wolves had formed a wide circle, no one daring to cross the perimeter of scorched moss that ringed the center.

"She said it’s waiting," Beckett murmured.

"For what?" Magnolia asked.

"For you," Camille said, not turning.

The moment Magnolia stepped across the ring

The world tilted.

She fell without falling.

No pain. No scream. Just a shift in gravity and light.

When her eyes cleared, she was standing in a field of wheat.

Sunlight spilled across her skin. Warm. Golden. Familiar.

A wind stirred the crops. A river hummed nearby.

She took one step forward and stopped.

There, sitting beneath the old sycamore tree at the hill’s crest, was her mother.

Not as Magnolia last remembered her frail, fading, eyes cloudy with illness.

No.

This was her mother as she had been before everything broke. Strong. Laughing. Her hands stained from herbs, her wolf mark vibrant and unmarred.

Magnolia’s breath caught in her throat.

She took another step.

Then another.

Her mother looked up and smiled.

"You’re late," she said.

Magnolia opened her mouth.

But no sound came.

The field shimmered.

And shifted.

The tree was gone.

The light turned gray.

Now she was inside the old chapel the one they used to hide in as pups when the rain came too fast.

The scent of burning parchment filled the air.

Blood streaked the walls.

Camille’s scream echoed from the altar.

Magnolia ran.

But the aisle stretched.

Ten steps became twenty.

Thirty.

A hand grabbed her wrist.

She turned.

Rhett stood there.

But not Rhett now Rhett as he had been the night Camille drowned.

Wet. Shaking. Blood on his collar.

"She was calling for you," he whispered.

"I tried "

"No," he said, eyes hollow. "You hesitated."

The world spun.

She was at the riverbank.

Camille’s body floated past.

Magnolia screamed.

And woke up choking on ash.

She was back in the Hollow.

On her knees.

Shaking.

The wolves stood in silence.

Camille knelt beside her.

"The Fang doesn’t cut flesh," she whispered. "It cuts through denial."

Magnolia looked up, tears in her eyes. "It made me watch her die again."

"No," Camille said. "It made you admit why you ran."

Magnolia flinched.

Because she remembered.

The hesitation.

The fear.

Not of losing Camille.

But of failing her.

The Keeper stepped forward.

"The Fang’s judgment is not cruel," he said. "It reveals the piece of you that memory tried to bury."

Beckett helped Magnolia stand.

"Did it work?" he asked.

Camille nodded slowly.

"The Fang is awake. And it knows we’re ready."

"Ready for what?" Elara asked.

Camille looked to the sky.

And whispered:

"To bleed."