The night was still. Too still.
Dave stood in the doorway of that busted cabin, breath fogging in the cold, heart still thumping like a war drum.
The others were gone—scattered or broken.
The Old Wolf? Vanished.
But something didn't sit right.
Dave crouched near the fire where the scuffle had happened. His eyes scanned the dirt—then paused.
A footprint.
Heavy. Clean. Different tread than the rest.
He followed it.
Not far from the fight site, tucked under a half-burned plank, he found it—
a broken matchstick… and a folded piece of paper, torn from a notebook.
The handwriting was sharp. Controlled. One sentence:
"If you want answers, follow the scent of burnt pine."
Dave raised an eyebrow.
"Burnt pine?"
He sniffed the air.
Nothing.
But when he turned back toward town—there it was.
A faint trail of smoke rising from the treeline in the distance.
He smiled.
"Guess the old man wanted me to keep digging…"
He pocketed the paper, grabbed the knife still lodged in the dirt, and walked toward the trail.
The smoke was faint—barely a whisper above the trees.
Dave followed it.
The forest was quiet, like it knew not to speak while secrets were unfolding. Every step deeper felt like peeling back a layer of something forbidden.
Then he saw it:
A small shack tucked between twisted pine trees.
Burnt. Half-collapsed. Still smoldering.
"Well… this place got baptized in hellfire," Dave muttered.
He stepped over charred branches and ducked inside.
It wasn't much—ash, soot, and blackened wood.
But in the far corner of the shack, he saw something untouched by flame:
A single metal box tucked beneath scorched floorboards. The latch wasn't locked—it was waiting.
Dave opened it.
Inside:
A torn photograph: a younger version of the Old Wolf, standing beside a woman and a child—faces scratched out. A military tag. The name? Kade, Devlin. A faded notebook with one phrase circled:
"What's buried in the woods doesn't always stay dead."
Dave's stomach sank. He flipped through the notebook—notes on rituals, marked maps, names crossed out, like a kill list or a warning list.
On the last page: a red X drawn across the same side of town where Dave had just gotten ambushed.
"So that's why you came," Dave muttered. "You knew they were gathering."
He looked around the shack one last time.
Whatever this was, it ran deep.
And the Old Wolf wasn't just fighting random criminals…
He was cleaning something up.
Something ancient.
Something coming back.
Dave pocketed the dog tag and notebook.
"Alright, old man," he whispered. "I'm in."