Crescent of Vengeance: Heir of the Wolves, Alpha of the World

The wind that scoured the Frostfang stronghold howled with a voice older than any king. Snow danced on the currents like spirits seeking their lost graves, and the sun, rising pale over the broken towers, felt as weak as a dying candle.

Aldric stood alone before the gates, eyes tracing every scratch upon the ancient wood, every smear of dried blood. The runes the White Lady had left still pulsed faintly, as if mocking his power.

Rowena approached at last, armor rattling lightly. "The scouts have found no trail," she told him, bitterness ringing in every syllable. "She's vanished as if the earth swallowed her."

He nodded slowly, jaw set. "She will show herself again. She wants us to follow."

Rowena lowered her gaze. "It could be a trap."

A cold smile twisted Aldric's lips. "It is a trap. And I will spring it on my terms."

Their journey began before the noon bells finished tolling, a grim procession of steel and oaths. Aldric chose only his most trusted warriors: men and women who had bled for him, who would die for him if commanded. They left the castle behind in a black river of cloaks, riding out over the icebound hills with blades drawn.

Along the way, the villagers watched them pass, faces hollow from too many winters of hunger and fear. Mothers clutched their children close, bowing low, praying to the Crescent Wolf for mercy.

In one village, a child no older than six stepped into the road. Her hair was matted with frost, eyes wide as the moons themselves. She carried a battered wooden toy in the shape of a wolf, its paint worn down to bare wood.

"My lord," she called, voice tiny against the screaming wind.

Aldric slowed his mount. "What is it, little one?"

The girl looked up with a courage that seemed too big for her small bones. "Will you kill the witch?"

Silence fell among the riders. Even Rowena glanced away, as if the question cut too close.

Aldric leaned forward in the saddle, searching the girl's solemn face. "I will do more than that," he promised. "I will free your dreams from her shadow."

The child nodded once, clutching her wooden wolf tightly to her chest. Then she stepped aside, letting them pass.

For two nights they rode without rest, following signs only Aldric seemed able to see: twisted stones, patterns in the frost, feathers left by ravens who watched from every tree branch.

At the edges of sleep, a voice teased his mind, silk-sweet and poisonous:

You are mine, Crescent Wolf. All roads lead to me.

He ignored it, gripping the hilt of his sword so hard that his knuckles turned white.

By the third night, they reached a forest so old that even the moonlight dared not enter it. Black pines rose like spears, their bark carved with symbols from forgotten tongues. Between the trees, a heavy mist coiled and writhed, carrying scents of grave earth and bitter herbs.

Rowena shivered visibly. "I have heard of this place. The Drowned Vale."

Aldric scanned the shifting fog. "A place of curses."

She nodded. "No one who enters without an offering leaves alive."

His lip curled. "Then let my fury be my offering."

They tied their horses outside the forest's edge, blades drawn and runes of warding etched across their hands. As they stepped beneath the branches, the air seemed to grow heavier, pressing against their skin with a thousand invisible hands.

Somewhere ahead, a bell tolled — soft, broken, out of place.

Aldric led them through winding paths where twisted trees bent low, clawing at their cloaks. Shapes moved just beyond sight, whispers clung to their thoughts, and once, a hand of pale bone reached for Aldric's face before vanishing into the fog.

Rowena gripped his arm. "They test us."

Aldric nodded. "Let them."

They came at last to a glade where the mist parted, revealing a small shrine of black marble. Upon its altar rested a bowl filled with water so clear it reflected the stars even beneath the forest's choking canopy.

A woman stood beside it.

She was robed in white, hair unbound and wild as a storm, skin like alabaster left too long in the cold. In her hands she cradled a staff of blackthorn, crowned with a raven's skull.

"Crescent Wolf," she said, voice echoing like the toll of a funeral bell, "you come to me at last."

Aldric stepped forward, rage and purpose burning through every nerve. "Where is my brother?"

The woman tilted her head, a curious predator. "Safe," she lied with such calm cruelty that even Rowena hissed under her breath.

"I will tear you apart," Aldric promised, his power singing along his veins, a rising, savage symphony.

She only laughed, a sound so empty it made his bones ache. "You cannot kill what the prophecy has claimed."

The wind tore through the glade, rattling the bones of the forest, carrying with it the stench of rot and old magic.

Rowena raised her sword, blue runes flickering down its blade. "Speak plainly, witch!"

The White Lady's eyes gleamed with an inhuman light. "The boy is marked. The Wolf King's blood is poison to itself. You will turn upon your family, Crescent Wolf. That is the shape of the ending."

Aldric stepped closer, eyes burning. "If that is destiny," he snarled, "then I will change it."

He lunged, faster than a striking hawk. The witch raised her staff, and the world split open in a shriek of shattering power. Light poured across the glade, blinding and cold, and for an instant Aldric felt himself lifted from the earth, as if every thread of who he was had been cut.

He woke in darkness.

His first breath tasted of iron, raw and suffocating. He tried to rise, but chains dug into his wrists, biting through skin to bone.

Around him, shadows shifted, voices rising and falling like the tide, too many to count, too far to truly hear.

Where am I?

Pain lanced through his skull. Flashes — of his mother's smile, of Thorian's laugh, of the Crescent Wolf howling beneath a moon so full it looked ready to break.

Then those memories vanished, replaced by a void so cold it felt as if his soul had been stripped away.

Who am I?

In the world above, Rowena searched the glade in frantic circles, shouting his name, blade gleaming in the dim half-light. The witch had vanished into the mist, leaving only that same raven silk, pinned to the shrine by a thorn.

Rowena snatched it free, eyes blazing. "I will find you, Aldric," she swore, voice raw with grief and fury.

Days passed.

Aldric was moved from place to place, always blindfolded, always bound, until the smell of mold and wet stone became the only truth he could trust.

They starved him, drugged him, spoke to him in riddles until even his name seemed like a foreign word.

You belong to us now, the voices said. Forget.

And slowly, terribly, he did.

When at last they freed him from the chains, he stood before the White Lady like a puppet with cut strings.

She smiled at him, all ice and rot.

"Who are you?" she asked gently.

His lips parted.

"I… don't know," he whispered, and the words felt like knives.

Her smile grew wider, triumphant. "Then you are mine."