POV: Dr. Camilla Harts — Somewhere Outside Albuquerque, New Mexico
The wind screamed across the open desert as Dr. Camilla Harts stepped out of the black SUV, her boots crunching against sunbaked gravel. Her eyes scanned the stretch of sand and rock ahead—no sign of civilization, just jagged plateaus and the quiet hum of old magic buried in forgotten earth.
"Coordinates match," said Agent Leoni from behind her, flipping closed a handheld scanner. "This is the place."
Camilla adjusted her glasses. The sun glinted off the silver streak in her hair—a streak that hadn't been there before Rome.
"Third site," she whispered.
Rome. Arizona. And now… New Mexico.
The land was dry, cracked in some places, with patches of black rock that looked volcanic but gave off no heat.
Camilla's fingers trembled slightly as she unpacked the relic compass—a crescent-shaped device that vibrated in the presence of werewolf-aligned energy. It had gone still in Rome and surged in Arizona.
Here… it spun. Wildly.
"It's not stable," she muttered.
Agent Leoni frowned. "Like interference?"
Camilla crouched, pressing her palm against the ground. "No. Like it's reacting to something older. Unfiltered. Raw."
Suddenly, the compass stilled—pointing to a narrow crevice in a rock formation about thirty meters away.
Without hesitation, Camilla stood and moved toward it.
---
The crevice led into a natural tunnel, where the air grew cooler, heavier with each step. Faint markings on the walls emerged—the same hybrid symbols she'd translated from the Rome monolith, combined with glyphs that hadn't been recorded anywhere.
Camilla's breath hitched.
"These are pre-Columbian. But… not Navajo, not Puebloan. They're not Native. They're…"
She swallowed. "They're older than tribal record."
She reached the chamber at the end of the tunnel and froze.
A glass obelisk, jagged and tall, jutted from the earth like a buried shard of starlight.
Cracks ran along its surface, pulsing with faint silver light. Inside: a figure.
No. A shadow.
Trapped.
Sleeping?
Watching?
Camilla stepped forward, unable to breathe. The obelisk responded, light surging with her proximity.
And then—the shadow moved.
---
Camilla snapped out of her trance and pulled out the translation journal she'd been keeping since Adunni's grandmother's diary had been decrypted.
A fragment came to her mind:
"There are those buried not in earth but in memory—guardians who were punished for disobedience to the Moon Rite. They lie not dead, but waiting."
She flipped pages rapidly.
Found it.
"They dream in glass prisons. The Hybrids will wake them. And when the third one opens their eyes, the war begins."
Camilla's hand began to shake.
"Dear God… this isn't just another relic site. This is a containment tomb."
---
The obelisk flared.
Camilla staggered back as a vertical fissure cracked down its center, and the room filled with a high-pitched whine like metal screaming.
"We need to go—now!"
Leoni was already pulling her away.
But Camilla couldn't stop watching. Because through the widening crack, the eyes opened.
Not human. Not fully wolf.
Something else.
And they were looking directly at her.
---
Luca Deluca— Arizona, near the Moon Pillar site
Luca stood on the rocky ledge overlooking the dry gulch, satellite phone pressed tight to his ear, jaw clenched.
Camilla's voice crackled through the static, her words jagged and frantic.
"The obelisk opened—Luca, it wasn't a relic. It was a tomb. It's alive."
Then the line went dead.
Not lost.
Severed.
A pulse of magic stirred beneath his feet.
Adunni was already beside him, one hand fisted, the other holding her grandmother's journal close to her chest. Her curls were wind-whipped, her skin glowing faintly under the moonlight as if the desert air had triggered something inside her.
"What did she say?" she asked, voice steady but tight.
Luca turned slowly.
"She found the third obelisk. It's waking something."
---
Adunni turned away, walking toward the edge of the basin. Her boots kicked up dust, but her eyes didn't waver.
"My grandmother wrote about this," she murmured. "Three sleeping voices. Sealed in stone. Bound to the bloodline of the hybrid."
She met Luca's eyes.
"It's not just that I'm the key. I'm the fuse."
Luca didn't speak.
He couldn't.
Because the power radiating from her—raw and sacred—made something in his chest ache. Not fear.
Love.
And fear of losing her.
---
Suddenly, Adunni stumbled, nearly falling to her knees.
He caught her instantly, wrapping his arms around her from behind.
"What is it?" he asked, panic threading his voice.
Her body trembled in his arms.
"It's… it's trying to speak through me."
Her eyes glowed—a twin fire of gold and violet.
A whisper rode the wind. A voice.
Not hers. Not fully.
"The third gate is open. The fourth must never rise."
Then silence.
She collapsed against him, breath ragged.
"That wasn't just a warning. That was a memory… from something older than all of us."
---
Luca lowered her gently onto a stone slab and knelt beside her. He brushed her hair from her damp forehead and whispered—
"You're not facing this alone, Adunni. No matter what these prophecies say… I'm not letting you burn for the world's sins."
Her fingers closed over his hand.
"And if I do burn?" she whispered.
"Then I'll burn with you."
Their lips met—fierce, desperate, soft all at once. A promise sealed in the space between heartbeats.
But even as they kissed, a shadow rippled across the rocks.
Below the basin, where the earth was thought solid, something stirred.
A crack formed in the ground—spidery, small, but pulsing with violet light.
Unseen by either of them.