You never have.The words were like pieces of ice, hammered in a midnight storm, that came out of the lips of Aric Blackthorn, each syllable cleaving the tense silence like a blade thrust home.“You bastard!” The stillness was broken by the scream of Vira, and the face of that girl was contorted into a mask of naked, unrestrained rage. Everything around them was moving slowly, like syrup, as the world was approaching a boiling point.The crimson eyes of Aric flashed with deadly accuracy, and narrowed to slits, as though to cut through the very air. His senses were keener, all his muscles tensed as a bowstring.He beheld it all.The slight shake in the hand of Vira holding the dagger, the fingers tightening with the venomous determination.The angry throbbing of a vein at her temple, the fury and barely suppressed rage.The sternness of her set jaw, where reason sank beneath the incoming flood of anger.The straining energy in her legs, ready to deliver a brutal attack.He had practice

Aric Blackthorn’s days bled into one another with a numb and gnawing difficulty. Though Lucien Blackthorn acknowledged him as a direct bloodline, he made no illusions about favoritism. In the halls of Clan Blackthorn, mercy was a forgotten dialect, and Aric was expected to survive it all alone: a lamb cast among wolves armed with obsidian teeth.When he failed to evolve at twelve, the cold got colder.Lucien had once glimpsed a flicker of potential in Aric, hoping that perhaps, just perhaps, the boy might awaken a spark from the ash of his father’s legend. But Aric’s failure to evolve was a scar on the clan’s pride, one Lucien could not let fester. So he threw Aric at the abyss, again and again, hurling him into encounters with the darkness beasts that festered in the outskirts—hoping violence might awaken virtue.After two years of silence and failure, even hope gave up.And now, the latest mission was not a test, but an execution dressed as duty.High above the courtyard, Corvin cle

"Finally," Darius Blackthorn muttered, his eyes gleaming with a predator’s thrill.After dragging that useless failure of a boy along like dead weight through mission after mission, it was finally time to sever the chain.'I hope he runs. I pray he refuses.'Because if Aric Blackthorn so much as flinched the wrong way, Darius would have the legal, personal, and deeply satisfying pleasure of ending him — officially.The grand obsidian doors of the Blackthorn manor swung wide.Out stepped Aric.And behind him, silent as snowfall but twice as lethal, Seris.Back straight. Eyes like twin blades of polished winterglass. Gait fluid and fast, as though he carried not weight, but purpose.The gathered sentinels, clad in matte crimson armor, bowed as one. Aric did not spare them a breath."Ninth Vein," one murmured as he passed.He said nothing, climbing into the bloodwood carriage without so much as acknowledging Darius.Normally, such brazen disregard would have ignited Darius’ fury. Today?

"Ready, Ninth Vein?"Rowan’s voice fractured the quiet like a blade across ice.Aric Blackthorn blinked once, slow and unreadable, before peeling his gaze from Seris. His eyes shifted, not lazily, but with terrifying clarity, to Rowan.He nodded once.Rowan snapped the reins of his Gravethorn. The beast snorted, embers rising from its nostrils like it resented being tamed. Aric followed suit, his own Gravethorn obeying with a rumble, and Seris flanked him silently.They moved as one toward the gate.It wasn’t just massive. It was impossibly massive — a slab of forged obsidian laced with spell-etched silver, bound in mechanisms older than the dome itself.Rowan gave a slight nod to the guards.With a sound like dying titans, the gates groaned open. Chains snarled. Runes flared a dull red. Gears locked and unlocked with the weight of entire cities.A wind shrieked through the widening divide — cold, bitter, and sharp with metallic tang.Aric’s jacket flared behind him. His hair danced i

Darkness consumed everything.It was not just the absence of light, but a complete severing of sensation. No sound. No texture. No gravity. No thoughts. Only the void.And yet, Aric Blackthorn floated within it.He drifted like a leaf on an invisible sea, and for the first time in his fractured memory, he felt peace. A peace so whole it mocked every pain he’d carried. The weight of expectation, the agony of betrayal, the screaming silence of loss—it all dissolved into nothing.Until even himself began to fade.His name.His reason.His rage.Even the outlines of his parents' faces bled out into oblivion.But then—Two crimson eyes snapped open in the void.Aric’s psyche reeled as though punched by a memory. His senses returned like glass reassembling mid-shatter."That was too close."His inner voice rang sharp, the blade of thought reforged. Something was trying to crawl into his mind, slow and subtle, like ink bleeding into paper."Don't forget... don't forget..."He clenched his ja