Filed to story: Mated and Hated by My Brother’s Best Friend Book PDF Free by Anna Campbell
He didn’t argue. He just stepped up beside me and offered his hand. I didn’t take it. Not because I didn’t want to-but because I was af fall apart.
Eva’s scream ripped through the night. at if I did, I’d
We ran.
By the time we reached her, Ethan was already at her side, holding her down gently as she thrashed in her sleeproll. Her eyes were open. Seeing-but not.
“Eva-” I dropped to my knees, grabbing her hand. “Hey. Hey, look at me. Come back.”
She gasped and arched off the ground. “Not flame… steel. A blade she knows. A brother’s scream. A fall too fast-“
“Shh.” I pressed her hand to my chest. “You’re not there. You’re here. You’re safe.”
Her body bucked again, and then stilled. The silence that followed was deafening. Even the wind seemed to hold its breath.
Eva blinked. Slowly. Her lips parted. “It’s inside the stones,” she whispered. “It’s not waiting anymore.”
Bastain arrived then, his cloak streaked with ash from the fire. He knelt beside her, pulling a relic from beneath his shirt a small, orb-shaped charm bound in braided silver. He pressed it to her forehead. “This will anchor her,” he said. “Her visions… they’re not just warnings. They’re countdowns.”
I felt the weight of those words settle in my chest.
I rose to my feet, needing air. Needing something. Anything. The village felt tighter now, like the walls themselves were inching closer. I stumbled toward one of the cottages, its door barely hanging on its hinges. The moment I crossed the threshold, the air shifted.
My flame flared beneath my skin. Not in defense. In recognition.
I paused.
A single scroll was pinned to the inside of the door.
Burned around the edges. Still warm.
I stepped closer, heart hammering.
The words were charred but legible:
She walks. The-walls listen. You are late.
Beneath it: Jiselle.
Written in mirrored runes.
My stomach twisted.
“Nate,” I called, my voice cracking.
He appeared almost instantly, sword in hand. “What?”
I pointed to the scroll. He read it, jaw tightening.
“We need to get out of here,” he said. “This village-it’s not abandoned. It’s… marked.”
“No,” I whispered. “It’s remembered.”
We left the cottage in silence.
Back at camp, Eva sat propped against a log, breathing shallow but aware. Her eyes tracked me as I approached. “It’s not Kael alone,” she said softly. “Not anymore. The Gate-it’s not pulling from one place. It’s everywhere.”
“What do you mean?”
“It’s in the stones,” she repeated. “In the ground. In the blood. Someone inside the Academy has already opened it partway. It’s echoing through everything now.”
Before I could respond, thunder cracked-loud, sharp, close.
But there were no clouds.
Just Nate.
Holding something in his hand.
A cracked compass.
He held it up. “It’s not pointing north anymore.”
I stared. “Then what-“
“It’s pointing toward you.”
A beat.
Then the ground shivered beneath our feet. Not violently. Not
But like something turning over in its sleep.
Something waking.
I looked down. like
And realized the stones we’d made camp on weren’t just stone.
They were carved. Ancient. Covered in the same mirrored runes as the scroll. Just faint enough that we hadn’t noticed in daylight.
But now-beneath the twilight-they glowed.
Soft. Violet.
Familiar.
The Gate had been here before.
And it had left its breath behind.
I backed away.
Nate caught me before I could fall.
“I’m not ready,” I whispered.
He cupped my face. “You don’t have to be. Just don’t run.”
I didn’t.
I stood. faced it.
Because we had no choice.
And I’d rather meet the end on my feet.
Still, as the others gathered behind me, as Ethan helped Eva to her feet, as Bastain pressed his hand to the stone and murmured something in a language.
I didn’t know-
I felt it again.
That pulse.
The one not of flame.
But of watching.
The Gate wasn’t sleeping.
It never had been.
It was just waiting.
And now, it had seen me.
*Jiselle’
The snow had stopped falling, but the silence it left behind felt louder than any storm. Ash still clung to the branches like a warning not yet spoken. Our camp sat uneasy beneath the cold canopy, every flicker of flame casting nervous shadows on the canvas of our world. But it wasn’t the cold that made me restless. It was something older.
Something remembering.
Bastain had gone quiet again after the scout’s update. No new messages. No new deaths. Just the kind of quiet that didn’t soothe-it prowled.
I stood at the edge of the leyline ridge, violet flame curled gently in my palm. I didn’t even call it anymore-it came on its own, answering a question! hadn’t meant to ask. My bond with Nate pulsed steady somewhere behind me, but I didn’t turn. I couldn’t. Not yet.
Because there was something in the air.
Something beneath it.
And when I finally turned to leave, I wasn’t surprised to find Serina already waiting.
She didn’t speak. She just nodded toward the trees, and I followed.
The cave mouth we reached wasn’t large, but it bled heat like a slow wound. Serina walked ahead, her fingers trailing along the stone wall like it was familiar, sacred.
“This place wasn’t always closed,” she said at last. “It once opened directly to the Gate.”
I swallowed. “Is it safe?”
“No,” she said. “But it’s honest.”
The air shimmered as we stepped inside, magic whispering across my skin like silk laced with blades. I felt each rune in the stone, each symbol carved into the walls. Some pulsed faintly when I passed. Others stayed dead.
At the back of the chamber, a flame burned inside a basin. Not mine. Not violet. Something older. Orange-gold, low and pulsing like a dying heartbeat.
Serina turned. “You’ve asked what came before you. You’ve asked why the Gate calls your name. This flame remembers.”
I didn’t move. “You said the Gate isn’t watching Kael anymore. That it’s shifting.”
She nodded. “Because it’s not just a prison. It’s a memory. And it’s starting to remember itself.”
“And me?”
She looked at me with something close to sorrow. “You are the first to ever survive this far. The others…” She trailed off. “They burned. Or were consumed.”
“Others?” I asked, voice tightening.
Serina turned back to the flame and held out a small glass vial. Inside was ash. Pale, glimmering ash.
“I told you I failed,” she whispered. “But I didn’t die.”
I stared.
“That was the lie they told to keep the story clean. To keep the prophecy unsmudged. But the truth is when the Gate rejected me, it didn’t kill me it fractured me. Split my essence. Half went into the veil… the other half survived.”
I took a shaky step closer. “And that half… became me?”
“You’re not a rebirth.” Serina said softly. “You’re a continuation. The Gate doesn’t start over it keeps weaving the same thread. Until it finally pulls light
The flame behind her flared once. Then twice.
I didn’t realize my flame had answered until Serina looked down.
My hand had lifted.
Violet fire curled around my fingers, gentle but alive.
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