BloodMoon: Captivated by the Forbidden Lycan Alpha
Chapter 154: THE EVIL AWAKENS

Chapter 154: THE EVIL AWAKENS

"What the hell was that?" Dante demanded.

A sound rose from deeper within the cave, distant at first, then dragging toward us like something being born. Wet. Cracked. Twisted. It was as if the mountain had a throat, and it had just cleared it. The noise echoed up through the stone and spine alike. I froze mid-step. My breath caught, not out of fear but instinct. Old, ancient instinct. The kind I hadn’t felt since my turning. It told me to run. It screamed at me to get out. Dante muttered something in a dead tongue, but Rolan was the one who spoke first. Voice low. Rough. Dead serious.

"It’s coming," he said. "The evil in Blood Stone Mountain. It knows we’re here. And now it’s coming for us. It has awakened and headed right for us."

I looked at him. The Rolan’s eyes were glowing fully now. No human left in them. Just beast. And the beast was afraid. "That sound..." I said slowly, scanning the black ahead. "It’s not just noise. It’s waking something."

Dante nodded once. "No. Not waking. Calling."

Something shifted deep in the stone again, another thrum, closer this time. "We need to move," I said, voice low. "Now."

Rolan didn’t speak; he just turned. Sharp. Instinctual. He pivoted on his heel and started moving in the opposite direction of the sound. Not away from it. Around it. Like prey who knows the predator’s hunting blind spots. Dante and I followed without a word. The tunnels tightened, curling like veins through a corpse. The glow from Dante’s witch light flickered, shadows dancing across the jagged stone and damp walls that pulsed with warmth they shouldn’t have had like the mountain was breathing.

"Where are you going?" I asked, my voice low, my boots crunching over grit and bones that looked too fresh.

Rolan didn’t stop. "It’s shifting," he said. "Whatever that thing is... It’s not staying still. I felt it move." He sniffed the air. "But it’s not behind us anymore."

We pushed deeper, ducking beneath low arches and squeezing through narrow passes. The sound of dripping water echoed somewhere nearby. My fingertips brushed the wall and came back slick with something thick. Not water.

And then it hit me, a pulse, and not from ahead, not behind, not above. I stopped as cold flushed down my spine like ice poured through my veins.

"I feel it," I murmured. "Not behind us... not below... It’s above us. The fucking evil is above us"

Dante’s head tilted sharply. He went still in that terrifying, ageless way the Elders do, like time holds its breath around them. "It’s climbing the stone," he whispered. "Or worse... it is the stone."

A low, grinding sound came above us, far through the black and still somehow too close. Stone against stone. Flesh dragging across old roots. Something vast. Heavy. Alive. Rolan turned, eyes blazing gold now, voice nothing but beast and fear: "I can’t be caught in the evil; I have just gotten free."

I looked up at the ceiling of rock, suddenly aware that whatever had sensed us... whatever had screamed through the dark, and it was moving through the mountain like blood through veins. And we were the clot.

We kept moving, the path curling like the spine of some ancient beast, deeper into the mountain’s gut. The air was thicker now, heavy with rot and something electric, like the air before a storm or a scream. Then Rolan slowed, he stumbled slightly, pressing a hand to the wall like the weight of something unseen had just dropped onto him. His shoulders trembled. His breath hitched.

And then he murmured, "It... it sensed that I was free," he said, voice cracking like brittle bark. "It feeds from my powers. It’s been feeding—" His teeth clacked as a shiver ran through him, full-body and violent. I could hear them chattering. Then his eyes went wide, gold blown open, pupils’ pinpricks of primal terror. I’d seen fear before. I’d caused it. But this was different. This was submission. This was a beast that knew something greater stood above it.

Before I could speak, Dante moved. Smack! His palm hit the back of Rolan’s head with a sharp snap, not hard enough to hurt but enough to snap him out of it. The sound echoed off the cave walls like a slap across a cathedral altar. "Control yourself," Dante hissed, voice razor-thin with authority. "It smells your fear. It’s listening. You want it inside your mind, shifter? Do you want to go back to being imprisoned?"

Rolan blinked, dazed for half a breath, then growled low in his throat, not at Dante, but at himself. The beast was angry at the weakness. Embarrassed. I stepped between them, not to mediate, but to move. We didn’t have time for cracks in the foundation.

"Later," I snapped. "You want to yell at each other; do it when we’re out of this disdained mountain." Rolan gave a curt nod, but his hands were still trembling as we Iept walking, faster now, but the words echoed behind my eyes.

The mountain groaned again. Not a sound but a warning as something shifted far above us, stone dragging against stone, as if the mountain itself were grinding its teeth. I could feel it in my jaw, my ribs, the space behind my heart where no breath lived anymore. The air trembled as the evil drew closer. Rolan stumbled beside me, sweat pouring down his face, his body caught in some unseen tug-of-war. Whatever fed on his power was hungry now.

"You don’t have to stay." Kayne, my beast, pushed the words through. "Use the stone, and it will guide us out of the mountain."

I pushed the power of the Kayne stone, and it exploded out of me in a radius of shadow light blue-black tendrils of energy spiraling from my core, touching stone, space, and soul. The cavern was lit with arcane fire, veins of glowing script racing across the walls like lightning made of language. My shadow peeled away from my feet and stood, twitching, snarling, mirroring me, a second self formed of pure darkness and intention.

My fingertips ignited with blood light, deep crimson threads lacing between my knuckles like veins outside the body. I whispered the incantation of the Kayne family.

"Kayne ul’serak."

The shift came, and magic filled my veins like wildfire and moonlight. I felt my mind stretch, pressing into the stones around me, listening to the ancient whispers etched in the mountain’s bones. I could feel the location of the exit now, not by sight or scent but by the memory of wind clawed into the rock.

Behind me, the evil shrieked, furious. The magic in the stone had caught its attention. A rival. A challenge. My cloak unfurled, alive with enchanted threads that rippled like wings, lifting me from the ground in a slow, eerie glide. Symbols burned across my skin, runes, brands I didn’t remember earning. I raised one hand, and the shadows bent away. The stone walls obeyed me, opening, reshaping, guiding me forward as I floated like a ghost toward the passage above. Faintly, I could still hear Dante shouting. Rolan gasping. But their voices were distant, muffled by the roar of the thing rising in the deep, and I beckoned them to follow me as we moved out of bloodstone mountain.

A voice tore through the dark behind me, not made of words, but of bone-splintering sound, of hatred layered over centuries of hunger. It didn’t echo. It radiated, like sickness, like rot in a wound.

And within that screech, like a blade hidden in blood, I heard it: "KAYNE."

I froze and turned slowly, my fingers twitching with leftover magic, my breath stilling in my lungs.

"No..." I whispered. "You have no right to say my name."

The darkness behind me boiled with movement. I couldn’t see it yet, but I could feel it crawling through the walls, licking the magic I’d left behind. It knew the Kayne Stone.

"KAYNE!" it shrieked again, this time louder, twisted, and angry.

I staggered back a step, hand against the cave wall, fingers digging into cold stone as if it could anchor me. "No," Dante yelled, and then he stumbled forward, a guttural sound ripped from his throat, a wet cough, harsh and raw. I watched in slow motion as his hands reached out for support, but the stone walls around us seemed to twist, to pull back, as if the mountain itself was conspiring against him.

The blood came first. Dark, heavy, and thick, it spills from his mouth like ink pouring into water. It stained his lips, his robes, and the air between us, thickening the taste of fear. His knees buckled. One moment, he stood tall, a figure of ancient power, and the next, he crumpled, face pale, hands trembling at his sides.

"Dante!" I shouted, stepping forward instinctively, but my feet were glued to the floor. The air was too thick, pressing against me, suffocating me with dread. He gasped again before he fell, the sound of his body hitting the stone floor a sickening echo.

" Shit" Rolan cursed as blood pooled beneath him, seeping into the cracks of the mountain’s heart like the earth was drinking it in. Rolan was there in an instant, all ferocity and strength, his beastly instincts kicking in. He didn’t hesitate. Without a word, he dropped to his knees beside Dante, dragging him into his arms, and finally left the caves of bloodstone mountain.

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