The Forgotten Pulse of the Bond-Chapter 72: The Hollowfang Sigil

"I never trusted that chapel," Rhett muttered, pushing the heavy wooden door with his shoulder as Savannah followed closely behind.

The chapel had stood for centuries , a decaying testament to the wolves who had come before, their secrets buried in plain sight beneath sacred stone and hollow hymns. Candles lined the altar, melted to nubs, their last waxen breaths clinging to old brass holders. The stained-glass windows, cracked and faded, painted fractured rainbows across the dusty pews.

Savannah’s steps echoed behind him, hesitant, deliberate. "It smells like blood and pine... like the night your father vanished."

Rhett’s jaw clenched. "Sterling never left things untouched. If Camille’s right, the truth he’s hiding is down here."

He turned sharply, walking toward the altar. With a grunt, he reached under the wooden structure, pressing against the engraved crest , the Callahan seal. Something clicked beneath his fingers.

A panel shifted.

The stone beneath their feet gave a low groan, then parted in the center, revealing a dark passageway coiled like a serpent beneath the floor. Air escaped , stale, metallic, and cold , like breath from a long-dead mouth.

Savannah stepped back, her eyes wide. "What is this place?"

Rhett lit the torch from the wall and handed it to her. "Sterling’s past."

They descended slowly, stone stairs winding into the earth. The deeper they went, the more time unraveled. The walls were etched with forgotten glyphs, curling like ancient vines. Weapons long rusted lined display hooks , ceremonial daggers, bows carved from ash, shields shaped like wolf jaws.

Savannah ran her fingers across one sigil, tracing the shape of a coiled wolf with black flames erupting from its spine.

"Look at this," she whispered. "It’s not Callahan. It’s older."

Rhett knelt by a sealed vault door carved into the wall , bone-white, with a worn insignia barely visible through grime. It wasn’t the Callahan crest.

It was the Hollowfang.

Three curved fangs surrounding a single eye , the sigil of a faction lost to time.

His throat tightened. "My grandfather told me bedtime stories about them. Said they were a myth. A faction born from witches and wolves, blended by blood, not bond."

Savannah swallowed hard, remembering the scroll Celeste once burned before her eyes. "No wonder Sterling buried this. If Hollowfang is real... he’s not just hiding power. He’s hiding the origin of his control."

Rhett pressed his palm to the crest. The metal pulsed under his skin , warm, then searing. The door groaned, unlocking.

Inside, the room yawned wide , a vault carved from bone and stone, its walls lined with scrolls and war documents sealed with wax. Broken spears leaned against the far corners. And on a stone pedestal in the center, wrapped in decaying velvet, rested a single parchment, yellowed, brittle, and bound with a crimson thread.

Savannah approached it, heart pounding.

She untied the thread, letting the scroll unfold slowly in her trembling hands. Rhett stepped beside her, reading aloud over her shoulder.

"’To the heir not yet born, bound in silence and shielded by blood: the Hollowfang Circle awaits your awakening. The Luna Vessel shall rise only when the bond is threatened, and the Alpha bleeds by his own kind.’"

Savannah’s breath hitched. "That’s not a warning. That’s a prophecy."

A roar echoed above them , distant, but unmistakable.

They froze.

Footsteps pounded on the chapel floor above. Then silence.

Then a voice. Slurred. Menacing. "I smell them."

Savannah dropped the scroll.

Rhett grabbed her arm and pulled her toward the hidden door. "We’re not alone."

They ascended quickly, Rhett pushing Savannah behind him as the chapel grew louder with movement. A shadow passed across the stained glass , then another.

As they reached the final step, the panel above began to slide shut on its own.

"No," Rhett growled. He shoved upward, barely stopping the seal from closing. He heaved Savannah through first, then leapt after her, rolling onto the chapel floor.

A figure lunged from the pews , wild-eyed, feral. Not a wolf.

A Syndicate hybrid.

Half-shifted, flesh twitching with unstable power, it crashed into Rhett with enough force to knock over a row of pews. Rhett slammed his elbow into its throat, rolled, and reached for the broken altar candlestick.

Savannah screamed as another figure burst through the side window , this one smaller, faster, with venom glistening on its claws.

She ducked just as it slashed the air where her throat had been. It snarled and pounced again, but she twisted, grabbing the chain from the cross behind the altar and yanking it down. The heavy brass crucifix crashed onto the hybrid’s back with a bone-crunching snap.

Rhett had the first pinned, blood dripping from his lip as he forced the candlestick into its neck. "Tell Sterling," he snarled, voice dark, "his secrets are burning."

The hybrid choked, then collapsed.

Silence filled the chapel.

Savannah’s pulse thudded in her ears. She backed away from the body twitching near her boots.

Rhett staggered to his feet. "They knew we’d find it. They were waiting."

Savannah reached for his arm, then looked down , the scroll was gone.

"No," she whispered, scanning the floor. "It was right here, "

A laugh echoed from outside the chapel, taunting and cruel.

They raced to the door. Through the window, a figure in a long coat stood at the edge of the woods, holding the scroll above his head before vanishing into the shadows.

Rhett’s face darkened. "We’re running out of time."

Savannah nodded, eyes wild. "Then we hunt."

And with that, they leapt into the night, chasing ghosts across the forest, with the fate of the Hollowfang and the bond pulsing like fire in their blood.

"You shouldn’t have come here alone."

Rhett’s voice broke the stillness as he stepped into the dim chamber beneath the estate’s chapel, his boots echoing across the cold stone floor. The torchlight flickered along the moss-slick walls, casting elongated shadows that danced like ghosts behind him.

Savannah didn’t turn around. Her fingers traced the edges of the ancient scroll in her hand, the parchment brittle, ink faded, but the language sharp enough to bite through centuries of dust.

"I had to see it for myself," she replied quietly. "Camille said the answers were buried with the Hollowfang Circle. She was right."

Rhett came to her side, glancing down at the scroll. The symbols were jagged, marked with power, stitched together like veins pulsing beneath translucent skin. At the bottom of the page, a name had been scrawled hastily in blood: Sterling Vane.

"Why would he hide this down here?" Rhett muttered.

Savannah shook her head. "Because the truth damns him."

They stood in silence. The chapel above them had long since become a symbol of rebirth, the place where wolves pledged loyalty, where secrets were whispered beneath the veil of incense and ash. But down here, beneath the altar, there were no prayers, only records of war, betrayal, and bloodlines that refused to die.

Rhett stepped deeper into the vault, running his fingers across an iron chest bolted into the stone. With a grunt, he forced it open. Dust swirled into the air, coating everything in a fine gray mist.

Inside were more scrolls. Sealed letters. A silver circlet with a cracked sapphire at its center. And beneath them all, a black velvet box.

He opened it.

Inside was a dagger, obsidian blade, hilt wrapped in wolfhide, and etched in the same Hollowfang script. It shimmered with something unnatural, a cold that leached into the air.

"What is that?" Savannah whispered.

Rhett didn’t answer at first. He recognized it.

"It’s the dagger they used in the ritual that stripped Lucien’s line of their bond with the moon," he finally said. "I thought it was a myth."

Savannah’s blood chilled. "Why keep it?"

"Because Sterling always planned to finish what he started," Rhett muttered. "He just needed a vessel."

They locked eyes, the weight of those words sinking between them. Camille. The prophecy. The dagger. It was all converging.

"There’s more," Savannah said, pulling a leather-bound journal from beneath the scrolls. "It’s Sterling’s own record... Look, " She flipped through the pages. Notes on pack hierarchies. Bloodlines. Experimental rituals. Mentions of the Hollowfang Circle again and again, always alongside Camille’s birth name: Callista.

Rhett clenched his fists. "We were never meant to lead. We were meant to be replaced."

A loud creak echoed from the stairwell behind them.

Both turned.

Footsteps.

They moved quickly, extinguishing the torch, falling back into the shadows. From the narrow stair, a figure descended, hooded, cloaked in dark robes.

Savannah’s pulse thundered.

"Sterling?" she mouthed.

Rhett shook his head slowly. "Too short."

They waited in breathless silence as the figure moved to the altar. It knelt. Whispered something in the Hollowfang tongue. Then, with careful hands, it drew a blade, a twin to the one Rhett held, and pressed the tip to its palm.

Blood ran down, red and thin.

Rhett stepped forward without a sound and pressed the edge of his own dagger against the figure’s neck.

"Don’t move," he growled.

The figure froze.

"Who are you?" Savannah demanded.

The hood fell back.

It was Celeste.

Her eyes glimmered with something unreadable. "I came to burn the evidence."

Rhett’s expression darkened. "So you’re with him."

"I was," she said calmly. "Until I realized what he planned to do to Camille."

"You knew she was the vessel?" Savannah snapped.

"I suspected. But I didn’t know about the Hollowfang rites until I read his private letters. Camille isn’t just a vessel. She’s a binding key. Her death seals the new bond between Sterling and the old magic. That’s what he wants, immortality, through blood and ruin."

The silence after her words was deafening.

Savannah’s voice was soft. "So she has to live... or he wins."

Celeste nodded.

Rhett sheathed the dagger. "Then we protect her. And we burn this place to the ground."

Celeste held up a hand. "Not yet. There’s one more scroll. One you haven’t seen."

She retrieved it from beneath her cloak. It was wrapped in wolfskin, bound with silver thread.

Savannah unraveled it.

Her breath caught.

It was a Luna Rite. Forbidden magic. An old moonblood ceremony that allowed two bonded wolves to fuse powers, giving one the strength of both, but only if they had shared blood willingly.

At the center of the scroll were two names written in faded ink:

Magnolia Thorne

Rhett Callahan

Savannah stepped back, eyes wide. "He planned it from the beginning."

Rhett stared at the scroll, voice hollow. "He’s not just trying to control Camille... he’s trying to use me. To turn me into something else. With Magnolia."

Celeste’s expression turned grim. "And she doesn’t know. But if the ceremony is completed, she won’t be able to break it."

Savannah swallowed hard. "Where is Camille now?"

"I don’t know," Celeste said. "But Sterling has already set the pieces. He’ll force the bond. And if he does, you lose everything."

Rhett turned to the chest, grabbed every scroll, every letter, and jammed them into a leather satchel. "Then we stop him before he can finish the Rite."

"But how?" Savannah asked.

"By waking Magnolia," he said. "By telling her everything."

They didn’t wait.

As the three of them exited the vault, firelight flickered behind them, illuminating the sigil of the Hollowfang Circle carved into the stone wall, a wolf’s eye, surrounded by crescent moons.

As the door slammed shut behind them, a gust of wind extinguished the final torch.

And in the darkness, something moved, something that had been listening all along.