Elijah, who had been uncharacteristically quiet since the attack, finally spoke. “Agreed. We’ve been pushing hard. Let’s regroup, get our strength back.”
I nodded, glancing down at the two pieces of stone we had collected so far. They sat on the bedside table, rough and ancient, with faint etchings I still couldn’t fully decipher.
Alex plopped down on the other bed, stretching his legs out. “So, any brilliant ideas on what these pieces actually are?”
I hesitated, my fingers brushing lightly over the cold stone. “I’m not sure…” I admitted. “At first, I thought maybe these pieces were fragments of the Moon Keystone, but…”
“But what?” Austin asked, his teasing tone softening into something more serious.
A memory tugged at the edges of my mind–a dream, one that had felt too vivid to simply be a figment of my imagination. The boy with the crystal key. The way it had gleamed like captured moonlight. I remembered the way he had clutched it so tightly, as if it held the weight of the world.
“The key…” I murmured, more to myself than to them.
“What key?” Elijah asked, his gaze sharp as it landed on me.
swallowed hard, meeting their expectant eyes. “I had a vision. There was a boy–he was running through the woods, carrying a key. It wasn’t like these stone pieces. It was… pure crystal. Like it was carved from the moon itself.”
Isaiah’s brows furrowed. “And you think that’s the Moon Keystone?”
“I don’t know,” I admitted, frustration creeping into my voice. “Maybe these pieces are part of something else—another key to unlock the Keystone’s location. Or maybe…”
“Maybe we’re chasing the wrong thing,” Elijah finished, his jaw tightening.
Silence stretched between us, the weight of uncertainty settling heavily over the room.
“So, what’s the plan?” Alex finally asked. “If these pieces aren’t the keystone, do we keep chasing after them or switch gears?“.
I exhaled slowly, trying to clear my thoughts. “We keep going,” I said firmly. “Even if they aren’t the Keystone itself, they’re connected. Each clue is leading us somewhere. And if there’s any chance it helps us stop the Children of the Eclipse, we have to follow it.”
They didn’t argue. We all knew what was at stake.
Elijah pushed off the wall, his expression unreadable. “We’ll figure it out. We always do.”
I managed a small smile. “Yeah. Together.”
Austin let out a dramatic sigh from the bed. “Great. Another terrifying ancient mystery to solve. And here I thought we’d be lounging on a beach by now.”
Haughed softly. “Maybe once we save the world, we can take a vacation.”
“You promise?” Alex grinned.
I smiled back. “I promise.”
1/2
Chapter 143
“We should come back here after this is over,” I said quietly, staring out the window at the faint glow of the city lights. “The mountains are beautiful.”
Alex smiled, his gaze gentle. “I’d like that.”
We all sat there in comfortable silence, the weight of the world pressing down on our shoulders, but for the first time in days, it didn’t feel so unbearable.
Because we weren’t carrying it alone.
By the time I finally laid down, the sun was already beginning to rise, casting streaks of orange and pink across the sky.
I clutched Mariah’s necklace to my chest, the cold metal grounding me.
“We’ll find it,” I whispered to myself. “We have to.” I’m sure once we found the remaining pieces all this would make sense.
And as I drifted into an uneasy sleep, my wolf stirred was counting on us.
And I wasn’t ready to let it burn.
a silent promise burning in my bones. We wouldn’t fail. Because the world
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