Chapter 3 - The Ancient Inscription
The wind howled through the ruined arches of the northeastern ridge, five miles outside the city walls.
Elder Sira adjusted her thick cloak as she dragged her lantern across the ancient stone walls of the Lycan Shrine. She had spent forty years translating forgotten dialects, but tonight, the dread in her chest pushed her forward faster than her aging legs could carry her.
“It can’t be,” she whispered to herself, her shaking hands wiping away moss from a massive bas-relief carved into the mountain rock.
The moonlight caught the faded stone cut. It depicted a towering warrior standing barefoot amidst a sea of snarling, giant wolves. In the carving, the wolves were not fighting him—they were pressing their snouts against his ankles, their ears pinned back in absolute submission.
Above the warrior’s head was the ancient symbol of the Lycan Monarch: a dragon coiled around a crescent moon.
Sira pulled out a parchment scroll and compared the face on the stone to her memory of the humble stable hand who gathered herbs for sick children.
The jawline. The faint scar near the left temple. The unyielding, calm eyes.
It was an exact match.
“He who wears stillness like armor shall return when the pack has forgotten what it serves,” Sira read the ancient runic inscription aloud, her breath pluming in the freezing air.
“You shouldn’t be out here alone at night, Elder,” a quiet voice spoke from the shadows behind her.
Sira spun around, dropping her lantern. The flame flickered on the snow, illuminating Fenris standing at the entrance of the shrine. He wore his thin, patched coat, completely unfazed by the biting mountain frost.
Sira sank to her knees in the cold mud, bowing her head until her forehead touched the stone floor. “My... My Sovereign. The First Blood.”
Fenris sighed, stepping forward to gently wrap his hands around her elbows, lifting the old woman back to her feet. “Please, Sira. Don't do that. That title died a thousand years ago.”
“It didn’t die!” Sira insisted, tears freezing on her wrinkled cheeks. “The legends said you walked into voluntary exile to let mortals build their own world! But look at what we have built! Alpha Merrick rules through cruelty. Lord Caspian sells fake relics to fund a war against the southern provinces. The realm is rotting from the inside!”
“I know,” Fenris said softly, looking up at his own face carved into the ancient rock. “I thought if I lived simply—if I tended the earth and loved a good woman—the world would heal itself. But power left unchecked always rots.”
“What will you do?” Sira asked, her voice trembling. “Merrick has ordered his enforcement squad to arrest you at dawn on charges of treason. He means to execute you in the square and take Vana as a trophy.”
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Fenris’s eyes flickered. For a split second, the quiet, gentle human vanished, replaced by an aura so dense and terrifying that the stone shrine around them groaned under sudden, invisible pressure.
“Merrick wants a display of power,” Fenris said, his voice dropping an octave into a low, rumbling growl that made the ground beneath them tremble. “At dawn, I will give him one.”
