BloodMoon: Captivated by the Forbidden Lycan Alpha
Chapter 204: ECHOES BENEATH BLOOD STONE

Chapter 204: ECHOES BENEATH BLOOD STONE

{"Mountains are where the doors to divinity open. When you move the mountains, your power, calibre, potential, and capacity become mountainous". }

DANTE’S POV

The mountain swallowed light as we rushed forward and noticed that it was like absence but like hunger. "You feel that?" Rou asked quietly beside me.

I nodded. "Something is out there."

"Feels like being watched," Rolan muttered from behind, adjusting the sensors on his gauntlet. "Or judged."

"Same difference," I said. The tunnel narrowed as we moved forward, stone groaning above us like it was thinking about collapsing. "We’re getting close to the core entrance," I said, half to myself. "Once we pass it, the core’s only five levels down."

"And if the pulse hits again?" Rou asked, scanning the perimeter, hand steady on his rifle. "You still think this thing’s dormant?"

I glanced at him. "I want to finish the mission before it stops pretending to be. Get to the core as agreed and then seal it to see if there is any evil before we find where the evil creature lies. "

Rolan let out a dry laugh. "Well, that’s comforting."

We reached the next breach, massive and raw, like the mountain had been torn open from the inside. A circular shaft stretched downward, carved by something too precise to be natural and too old to be ours.

Rou peered over the edge. "What? How do we get down?

"We jump," I said.

"Of course we do," Rolan muttered sarcastically, and we all rushed and dropped down and then landed on the Mountain bed. No one spoke for a second. Then Rou broke the silence. "Why do I feel like we just walked into the heart of something alive?"

I looked at the walls, black stone streaked with those red veins, pulsing ever so faintly. And the hum... it was not just sound. It was in our bones. "Because maybe we did," I said. "

The heat spilled out like the exhale of a beast, not scalding, but alive. The air shimmered with something more than warmth. A thrum. A heartbeat, and we had stepped inside.

The threshold sealed behind us with a whisper like silk drawn across steel. Gone was the rough, crag-clawed rock we had passed by at the caves. This place... this heart of Blood Stone Mountain... had been shaped. The walls curved in impossible ways, veined with crimson light that pulsed in rhythm with something deep and patient. The path coiled downward in gentle spirals, floor tiles of obsidian and brass underfoot, engraved with symbols I could not read but felt in my bones, in my breath.

"Do you hear it?" Rolan asked, voice taut.

Rou nodded. "Not with ears. It is inside us."

The deeper we went, the heavier it grew. The sense of being watched became something more of a presence, not just behind us, but around us. Within us. Ancient. Endless. Then we saw it as it came into view. The core chamber yawned open like a sacred chamber from the roots of the world. At its centre stood a pulsing red stone that was embedded in the mountain bed.

"What the hell," Rou said, stunned. "It’s a... soul."

"A soul," I echoed, unable to look away. "Or a god."

Rolan knelt, one hand pressed to the floor. "It knows we’re here."

"I think Frery and Tor were right," I said, my voice ragged.

Rolan rose, and Rou stood beside him, silent but ready. "What do we do?" Rou asked.

"We met it," I said. "And find out about the evil that exists."

The moment I crossed the threshold, the world twisted. Not the way magic bends time or shadow, but the way memory clings to blood and the core chamber vanished, and I was pulled into the beaches of Bloodstone Mountain, and there stood the Late Lord of the Coven and my best friend, Dunco Kayne. He turned toward me, though I knew he saw nothing. This was a memory. A final echo, bound in the stone. "I will not yield," he said, voice ringing with grief and fury. "This mountain shall remain sacred. If I draw breath, the Kayne Stone shall never fall into their hands." Behind him, a storm was rising not of wind or water, but shadow. Figures cloaked in crawling darkness, eyes burning with hunger, emerged across the ridgeline, and they were infected with the blood stone bugs. Then a large wolf and a dark, dark-cloaked man appeared, and Dunco used his power to defend himself and the vision pulled me through it, but he was powerless, and the mountain betrayed him.

Not by choice, by design and from the core, the Seeker of the Deep, ancient and ruined, its body coiled in chains that were broken not long ago. It had come for the Kayne Stone, the heart of the mountain’s power. And it would not be denied, and Dunco stood atop the final precipice, blood pouring from a wound that would not close, and he did not have the stone, and his last words, "I will not live," he said, "but neither shall you reign." The shadow engulfed him, and the vision shattered like a mirror struck by lightning.

I dropped to my knees, gasping as the vision disappeared. "Dante." Rou’s voice echoed from somewhere distant. "What did you see? "I rose slowly, every inch of me heavy with grief I had not earned. "A promise," I said. "And a betrayal, and I looked up at the glowing core of the blood stone mountain. "And a warning."

Because the evil that killed the Dunco had risen and was alive. I stepped back through the arch, breath still ragged, the vision of the fallen Lord burning behind my eyes. Rou and Rolan were already waiting, their faces drawn, touched by their trials. None of us spoke right away. The silence between us said enough. But something clawed at my thoughts, some dark thread I had not seen before.

I turned to Rolan, my voice low, careful. "The day you were attacked by Dunco... What did it smell like? Around you, I mean."

His gaze shifted. Jaw clenched and then "It smelled like..." he started, then stopped, as if saying it aloud gave it form. "Blood. But old. Rotted. Thick in the air like fog. Like a battlefield left to rot under a black sun."

Rou tensed beside him, and Rolan went on, voice rough. "And something else. Dead bodies. Not just death. But desecration. It reeked of evil, Dante. The kind that does not belong in this world. The kind that should never be seen."

My stomach turned. I closed my eyes and saw the vision again the cloaked traitor standing over Dunco Kayne’s broken body. That scent had been there. Lingering in the air around the betrayal.

It was not just some ambush that day. The presence we felt now, the thing watching us inside the mountain, had touched Rolan’s past. Had marked it.

"No coincidence," I said under my breath. "It is the same. Someone corrupted the core of the mountain so that the evil seal could rise. It needs the Kayne stone so that it can solidify all the connections to the power of the Island and Mountains in the realm, the Bay Shifter, and the Paradise coven. We must stop it at all costs.

Rou stepped beside me, already half-changed, steam rising off his skin. His shoulders cracked wider, bones shifting beneath muscle. "It’s sealed in blood," he growled, voice half-beast. "We will need more than our human magic.

Rolan’s laugh came low and dark. "Good. I have got plenty to give."

Their bodies twisted, broke, and became something old. Rogourau beasts of, hulking shapes cloaked in matted fur and golden-veined eyes. The earth trembled beneath their feet, and I stepped between them, letting the stillness take me.

My pulse was still. My senses stretched, and the hunger in me stirred not for blood, not yet, but for truth. For the taste of what the mountain hid. I called on it, my gift, my curse. Shadows rose to meet me. My eyes went black, veins beneath my skin darkening like ink poured into glass. I became what I truly was: A predator that never had to breathe and the vampire beast that had fought as a general for many years.

"Break it," I said.

Rolan struck first, claws like daggers, tearing into the stone. Rou followed; jaws unhinged in a roar that could bend trees. I stepped forward, placed my hand on the gate, and let my presence seep into darkness fed by darkness, my mind bleeding into its defences.

The mountain roared, and a screech tore through the core like the cry of something that had died and never been buried. The doors split apart, reluctantly, and a wave of hot air surged out, moist, thick, copper-tanged.

The scent of ancient death, and we realized we had stepped into the darkness as the ground moaned. The mountain itself is pushing back. The floor split into spider-web cracks. Red veins of light flickered in panic. From the far end, beyond the glowing Kayne Stone, came a low hum deep as a burial drum.

We watched as something rose from the core, the black-cloaked thing. It did not walk. It floated, its edges blurring into the air like smoke, trying to remember it once had form. The hood was empty. The cloak was a tattered shadow. But behind it was will. Pure, ancient, unyielding.

Rolan snarled. "That is what attacked Dunco and me at the beach of Bloodstone Mountain."

In the vision the mountain gave me in the dying breath of the Lord of the Coven—this thing had stood over his broken body. It had come once for the Kayne Stone. And failed. Now we have woken it up again. "It’s the one that broke the seal," I said. "The traitor cloaked in shadow."

It turned its hood toward us. "How dare you disturb my master’s sleep?"

My fangs ached. "We didn’t come to kneel," I restored.

The chamber trembled, and it responded, "Then you came to die."

Behind me, Rolan and Rou growled, and we prepared to attack. And the fight for the mountain’s core began.

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