They didn't growl.
They didn't snarl.
They bowed.
Twelve of them—half-shadow, half-history—knelt at the cliff's edge beneath the fractured moonlight, their cloaks torn by time and claw. Their presence cracked something open inside Jonas. It was more than reverence. It was ritual. As if their very act of kneeling was part of some ancient oath being renewed after centuries of silence.
The wind shifted. Their scent reached him—earth, iron, blood… and ash.
The kind of scent no living creature could fake.
The kind of scent carried by legends.
One among them, tall and scarred with a mane of pale silver hair and a jagged crescent burned into his collarbone, stood. His eyes were glowing amber—not like a beast's, but something deeper, wiser. They didn't shimmer. They remembered.
> "We have waited long," the wolf said in the old tongue, voice gravelled and grave. "For the moon to mark again."
Jonas didn't know why he understood.
He just did.
Each word vibrated through his chest as though it were carved into his ribcage.
Elric, a step behind him, tensed. "The Ashfang," he muttered. "I thought they were extinct."
"They should be," Elena whispered. "But prophecy doesn't die. It waits."
The older wolf stepped closer.
He wasn't threatening—but he didn't have to be. His very presence made the trees lean away.
"I am Gharan," he said. "Dread-wolf of the Hollow Circle. First fang of the Ashfang Pack. Who among you bears the howl of Fen'kaar?"
Jonas swallowed.
"I do."
The pack stirred—heads lifting, claws shifting, tails twitching in the shadows.
Gharan nodded slowly.
> "Then we are yours."
They led him to a hidden grove layered with glowing moss and whispering leaves, where moonflowers bloomed only under certain stars. Pale blossoms curled along twisted trunks, and the trees themselves were marked with claw-scratched runes older than Kaladorn itself.
This was no ordinary forest.
This was a sanctum.
At its center, a fire was built not of wood, but of obsidian branches—moonburnt remnants gathered from a forgotten battlefield. When it was lit, the flames glowed blue and white, dancing in silence. No crackling. No smoke.
Just heat and memory.
Jonas sat near it, his back to a boulder shaped like a wolf's skull, carved naturally into the land by centuries of weather and time. He stared into the flames.
Everything he thought he knew—everything that had defined him up until two nights ago—was unraveling.
And yet…
He didn't feel afraid.
He felt seen.
Elena approached him from the shadows and handed him a blackened flask.
"Drink. It's hollowroot and winter ash. It will help ground you."
He sniffed it. "It smells like something died in here."
"Something did," she said, not smiling. "Your old self."
He drank.
It tasted like flame—not spicy, not bitter, but hot in a way that moved through the blood like truth.
Around the fire, the wolves began to howl.
Low and melodic, like a lullaby passed down from ancestor to child.
Each tone struck a different chord inside Jonas's chest—sadness, longing, fury… purpose.
"What are they doing?" he asked.
"Honoring the line that didn't break," Elena whispered. "You."
When the howling stopped, Gharan stood once more.
"We carry the old knowledge," he said. "Stories the Citadel burned. Names they scrubbed from stone. Truths your kind forgot when the kingdom crowned the unworthy."
He motioned, and a young wolf stepped forward—a girl no older than Jonas, with wild eyes and silver-streaked braids.
She removed a blade from her back—curved, ancient, and glowing softly with embedded runes.
She laid it at Jonas's feet.
"This belonged to Fen'kaar's sister," she said. "She fell protecting the Gate. Take it. It's yours now."
Jonas stared at the weapon.
It hummed faintly—like Whisperfang.
He didn't pick it up yet.
Instead, he asked, "Why me?"
Gharan tilted his head. "Because when the moon screamed, it screamed your name."
Jonas finally reached for the blade.
And the moment his fingers wrapped around the hilt, the forest around them shivered.
Elsewhere, in the blackest chamber of Kaladorn's underbelly, Prince Malik stood before a bloodstained altar.
Dark sigils twisted across the stone like serpents waking from slumber.
At his side stood a shadow-wrapped figure, veiled in the remains of something once human.
"They've found him," Malik said.
The figure made no reply.
"The wolves have taken him in. The Fangborn has their loyalty."
Still silence.
Malik clenched his jaw. "You swore me the Gate's power. That I would not be challenged."
The figure turned—and beneath its hood, two eyes burned red with ancient hatred.
> "You were promised a kingdom."
> "Not peace."
Back in the grove, Elric was sharpening his blade beneath a half-dead tree.
He hadn't spoken much since the wolves arrived. Jonas noticed. Something about Elric's energy had changed.
Eventually, Jonas approached.
"You alright?"
Elric didn't look up. "I'm not the one they're bowing to."
"That's not what I meant."
"You didn't choose this," Elric said. "And yet here we are. Bowing to ghosts and waiting for a boy to tell us where the war ends."
"I'm not trying to lead anyone."
"That's the problem," Elric muttered. "The wolves don't follow kings. They follow purpose."
And then, softer: "Find yours. Before someone else finds it for you."
Later that night, Jonas couldn't sleep.
He walked alone toward the edge of the grove, toward the cliffs overlooking the city.
From this height, Kaladorn looked like a painting—spires lit with amber glow, rivers running like silver threads between rooftops.
He felt it again—that pull in his chest.
That strange gravity.
Behind him, a whisper of air shifted.
He turned.
And there she was.
The silver-haired girl.
Same pale cloak.
Same quiet sadness.
"You," Jonas breathed. "Miren."
She didn't move.
Didn't blink.
"I'm not your enemy," she said softly.
"I was told you're dead."
"Death is different when the moon calls your soul."
She stepped closer.
"Malik has opened the Gate."
Jonas's stomach turned.
"I know. I saw the flames."
"You saw the fire," Miren whispered. "But you haven't seen what crawled out of it."
He swallowed hard.
"What's coming?"
She looked up at the stars.
"The First Moon is stirring. And he's not patient."
Before Jonas could ask more—
She was gone.
Suddenly, the earth shook beneath his feet.
A tremor.
Then another.
From the direction of the city, a roar shattered the sky—like stone tearing in half.
Elric and Elena came sprinting from the grove.
"What the hell was that?" Jonas shouted.
Elric's face went pale.
"That wasn't from the city," he said.
Elena looked back at the wolves—now fully transformed, eyes wide with fear.
She whispered, "That came from beneath it."
Another quake.
Louder this time.
Trees shuddered. The sky darkened unnaturally.
And from far beyond the cliffs—near the distant edge of the forgotten lands—a second moon began to rise.
But it was no moon.
It had eyes.