The forest had teeth, and they were finding her.
Aria woke to thorns in her palm, embedded deep where she'd gripped a branch in her sleep. No—not sleep. The black unconsciousness that took her when her body simply stopped obeying commands. She pulled the thorns free with trembling fingers, watched blood well in the tiny wounds. Such small hurts compared to the symphony of agony that was her shoulder, her ankle, the hollow ache where her thread used to anchor her to the world.
The rogue was gone. His scent lingered—wild honey and smoke—but the wolf himself had vanished like morning mist. She was alone again, truly alone, with nothing but the fog and the trees and the certainty that her body was failing.
Stand up.
Her mother's voice. Or her own. Hard to tell anymore when the fever made everything blur at the edges. Aria rolled onto her good side, used a low branch to drag herself upright. The world tilted, spun, settled into a gray haze that pulsed with her heartbeat.
Water. She needed water.
The thought became everything. More important than the fire in her shoulder, the grinding wrongness of her ankle, the way her vision kept fracturing into prisms of light. Water, then shelter, then—
Then what?
Find me again, the rogue had said. But first she had to survive the finding.
She made it three steps before her ankle buckled. The fourth step was a controlled fall. The fifth was a crawl.
Pine needles bit into her palms. Stones found the soft parts of her knees, her elbows, the torn places where her shift no longer protected skin. But she crawled, because the alternative was to lie down and let the forest claim her. Let the fog roll over her like a burial shroud. Let the hollow place in her chest expand until it swallowed everything she'd ever been.
"Even Omegas can carry grace, my starlight."
"Grace," Aria whispered, and the word came out cracked as old leather. There was no grace in this. No dignity in dragging herself through mud and mulch like a broken thing. Just the base animal need to continue, to persist, to spite the world that had thrown her away by refusing to conveniently die.
The trees changed as she crawled. Blackpine gave way to something else—silver-barked things that seemed to glow in the perpetual twilight. Their leaves whispered without wind, a sound like silk over stone. Moon trees. She'd heard of them in stories, sacred groves where the Goddess's presence pooled like water.
Of course she would die here. Of course the Goddess would watch.
Her strength gave out at the edge of a pool. Not water—something else. The surface was mirror-smooth, reflecting not the canopy above but a sky full of stars she couldn't see. The scent of it filled her nose—ozone and silver and the particular sweetness of celestial magic.
Aria's arms folded. She hit the moss face-first, tasted earth and copper and something else. Something that made her tongue tingle with the memory of lightning.
Get up.
She couldn't. Everything was too heavy. Her bones were stone, her blood was syrup, her thoughts were smoke dispersing in an endless sky. The silver fire that had saved her from the corrupted thing didn't answer her call. It had burned bright for one moment, then left her emptier than before.
Her eyes closed.
"Aria Nightbloom." The voice came from everywhere and nowhere. From the pool, from the trees, from the spaces between heartbeats. "Broken. Threadless. Still burning."
The world dissolved.
She was falling—no, floating. Suspended in a space that had no up or down, no ground or sky. Only silver mist that moved like living things and threads. Endless threads. They stretched in every direction, a cosmic web of light that hurt to perceive directly. Each one pulsed with its own rhythm, its own color, its own song.
Lives. She understood without knowing how. Every thread was a life, a story, a soul bound to another.
She looked for her own and found it immediately. Not because it glowed brighter or sang sweeter, but because it was wrong. Where other threads ran smooth and whole between souls, hers hung in tatters. Frayed. Burned at the edges where Lucien's rejection had severed it. But not... not completely severed.
That was wrong too.
A clean cut would have hurt less, healed cleaner. But this—this was a thread that had been torn, ripped, left to unravel in the cosmic wind. And at its heart, barely visible, a spark of silver light pulsed with stubborn life.
"Some threads are burned." The voice was feminine but not female, ancient but not old. It was the sound of moon-pull on tides, of wolves calling to their kin, of the first cry of every pup ever born. "Some are severed. But you—yours is being rewritten."
A book materialized from the mist. No—it had always been there, she just hadn't been able to see it before. Massive beyond comprehension, its pages made of something that wasn't paper, wasn't skin, wasn't anything that had a name in the waking world. The Book of Threads. She knew it like she knew her own name.
She reached for it, compelled by a need she couldn't name. Her fingers stopped inches from its binding, held back by a force that was gentle as silk and strong as mountains.
"Not yet. First, see."
The mist swirled, shaped itself into images that seared themselves behind her eyes:
A crown made of silver bones, burning atop a woman's head. The woman's face was hidden, but Aria knew those hands. Had seen them every day of her life. Her own hands, scarred and strong, gripping power like a weapon.
Lucien on his knees in a field of ash. His ice-blue eyes weren't cold anymore—they were broken. Behind him, the Throne Hollow burned with silver fire that consumed without destroying, transforming stone and wood into something altogether other.
Herself—but not herself—standing before the ruins of an ancient temple. Her hair was white as bone, her eyes were silver flame, and behind her spread wings that weren't wings. Shadow and light, fury and grace, the death of old things and the birth of new.
"This is one path," the voice whispered. "There are others. Darker ones. Bloodier ones. Ones where you become the very thing you fought in the forest—hunger wearing flesh, pain seeking pain."
More images: herself as the corrupted thing, hunting severed wolves through endless fog. Herself on a throne of corpses, ruling through fear. Herself burning, always burning, until nothing remained but ash and regret.
"The flame you carry—it is not yours alone. It belongs to every silenced voice, every rejected soul, every thread cut in cruelty rather than compassion. You can use it to illuminate... or immolate."
"Why me?" The words came out strange in this space, more thought than sound. "I'm nobody. Nothing. A rejected Omega who—"
"You are what remains when everything is taken. You are the answer to a question I asked long ago: what happens when those meant to submit choose to rise instead?"
The presence moved closer. Not physically—there was no physical here—but Aria felt it like sun on her skin, like ice in her veins, like the moment before lightning strikes.
"She who was cast out shall carry the flame. But fire, untamed, devours its bearer."
The Book of Threads opened. Just a crack, just enough for Aria to see her own thread being pulled into its pages. Not to trap it, but to... change it. Rewrite it. Transform what had been torn into something that could never be torn again.
"Choose." The voice was fading now, the vision beginning to fracture at the edges. "Rise and reclaim... or sleep and be forgotten."
The mist rushed away. The threads vanished. The book slammed shut with a sound like thunder, like ending, like beginning.
Aria gasped back to consciousness at the edge of the moon pool.
Pain hit her first—shoulder, ankle, chest, everything. But underneath it, something had changed. She lifted her hand, watched silver light trace her veins for just a moment before fading. Behind her ear, a burning sensation drew her fingers to new-raised skin. A mark. Crescent-shaped, warm as fever, pulsing in time with her heart.
The forest felt different. Not quieter—still full of danger and old magic—but watching her with new eyes. Considering. Calculating. The fog pulled back from where she lay, creating a perfect circle of clarity.
She was still dying. Still broken. Still alone.
But now she was dying with purpose.
Aria dragged herself to the moon pool's edge, cupped the strange water in shaking hands. It tasted like starlight and possibilities, like every prayer ever whispered to an uncaring sky. It burned going down, but it was a clean burn. A cauterizing flame that sealed some of the cracks inside her.
Not healing. Not yet. But enough.
She pulled herself up using a low branch, tested her weight on her swollen ankle. It held—barely. The mark behind her ear pulsed hotter, and for just a moment, she could have sworn she felt threads of silver light spreading from it through her body. Supporting. Strengthening.
Find me again.
The rogue's challenge echoed in her bones. But first, she had to find herself. This new self, marked by the Goddess, carrying flame that could save or destroy.
Aria took one step away from the pool. Then another.
The forest watched her go, and in the spaces between shadows, ancient things stirred. Not threatening. Not yet.
Waiting to see what she would become.
Waiting to see if the flame would crown her or consume her.
She chose forward. Chose pain. Chose the harder path of survival.
The Moon had touched her, marked her, shown her fragments of futures that might be. But in the end, the choice was hers. Had always been hers. Would always be hers.
And Aria Nightbloom—broken, threadless, burning—chose to rise.