The fire crackled weakly, the flames fighting against the cold mist still clinging to the air. The Bloodbound Circle sat in a rough circle, weapons close, eyes sharper than they let on.
Liora sat on a fallen log, her moon-eyes half-hidden under her hood, her fingers tracing the curve of her bow. She didn't look scared. She looked… tired.
Kael sat across from her, elbows on his knees, hands twitching. The lion in his chest was awake, pacing, growling softly in his mind.
"You want to tell us who you really are?" Kael asked, voice calm but sharp. "Because you didn't exactly look surprised when those things came crawling out of the trees."
Tafara leaned back, chewing on a piece of bark like it was a snack. "Yeah, and how'd you pull off that moon arrow trick? We barely hold our own, and you're out here rewriting reality like it's a bedtime story."
Liora didn't answer right away. Her gaze flicked to Kael — just for a second — before she spoke.
"My mother was a Seer," she said softly. "Not a priestess, not a warrior. Just someone who could hear the whispers before anyone else. One day, she heard a whisper that wasn't a spirit."
The fire popped. Everyone leaned in, except Ranga, who was doing flips over the fire to "stay loose."
"It was the Bvuri," Liora said. "Calling her. Calling me. They said… they said I was the Key."
Kael's heart skipped. "Key to what?"
Liora shook her head. "They didn't say. But they've been following me since the day I was born. Sometimes they whisper. Sometimes they scream. But they never leave."
Dendera's voice rumbled from behind his shield. "So they're hunting you. Same way they're hunting Kael."
Liora's eyes met Kael's again, and this time she didn't look away.
"They don't want to kill him," she said. "They want to bring him home."
Kael's breath caught. The lion spirit inside him snarled, like it was fighting against invisible chains. His hands clenched into fists.
"I'm not one of them," Kael said through gritted teeth.
Liora's voice was soft. "Aren't you?"
The mist was gone, but the forest wasn't quiet. Not for Kael.
Every time he blinked, the world shifted — the trees bent the wrong way, the ground pulsed like breathing skin. And in the spaces between the trees, he saw them.
The Bvuri.
They were watching.
They had always been watching.
They didn't speak with mouths — they spoke straight into his bones, into the marrow, into the parts of him he didn't know had ears.
Brother. Flesh of our flesh. Bone of our bone. Blood of our blood. Come home.
Kael stumbled to his feet, the world tilting sideways. Nyeredzi's hand caught his arm, her spirit-sight flickering around her fingers like faint silver threads.
"They're getting louder," she said. "Aren't they?"
Kael's teeth clenched. "They're in my head."
Tafara whistled. "That's gonna be fun at parties."
"Not now, Tafara," Dendera grunted.
But Liora stood too, her eyes glowing softly in the firelight. "They're getting stronger," she said. "Because you touched something. Something they left behind."
Kael remembered — the stone tablet back at the border, the one covered in runes his eyes couldn't fully see. The moment he touched it, the lion inside him had roared — and the Bvuri had answered.
"What was it?" Kael asked. "What did I touch?"
Liora's voice was barely a whisper.
"Their gate."
Kael turned back to the group, the firelight catching the lines of their faces — faces he'd fought beside, bled beside, almost died beside. They weren't just soldiers. They were his Circle.
"I'm not running," Kael said. "If they want me, they can come and get me."
Ranga flipped back into the circle, landing with a flourish. "And they'll have to go through us first."
Tafara grinned. "Finally. A fight where the odds are actually interesting."
Dendera's massive hand rested on Kael's shoulder, steady as stone. "We stand with you."
Nyeredzi's spirit-sight glimmered brighter, her voice soft but certain. "Where you go, we go."
Kael looked at Liora. "What about you?"
Liora's moon-eyes didn't waver. "They've been hunting me my whole life. If I have to stand between them and you — I will."
Kael's chest tightened. He didn't know if that was comfort or pressure. Maybe both.
"Then we move at dawn," Kael said.
He didn't say where.
Because the truth was — he didn't know.
But the voices were calling.
And Kael was done running.
End of Chapter Five