The forest watched him.
It had always watched those who bled.
Kaelen moved through the mist-drenched trees of the Veilwood with no direction, no destination only distance. From the shrine. From the pack. From the boy he used to be.
The branches above curled like claws. Moonlight, when it dared to fall through the canopy, fractured into strange shapes. The deeper he walked, the quieter the world became no birdsong, no wind, no life.
This was where they sent the Severed.
Not to be healed.
But to disappear.
His legs burned from days of walking. His cloak, once ceremonial, was torn and crusted with blood. The twin crescent scars on his chest pulsed when he stepped too close to the old stones ruins buried beneath vines, places where the Echo lingered.
He didn't know what was worse: the silence outside, or the whispers within.
Ever since the Severing, something had begun speaking to him.
Not in full sentences. Not in commands.
But in memories that weren't his.
A firelit cave. A girl with silver tattoos. A fang buried in moonstone. A promise whispered before death.
He shook his head and stumbled forward.
"You're not real," he muttered to the trees.
But the forest only watched.
And the path only darkened.
By the time he reached the river cold, swift, and black his knees gave out.
He collapsed on the mossy ground, half in shadow, half in moonlight, and stared at his reflection in the water.
The boy who looked back was not the same.
His eyes were no longer wolf-gold.
They were silver.
Burning at the edges.
Touched by something the Moon no longer controlled.
---
The rustle of leaves behind him was too sharp to be wind.
Kaelen twisted, instinct sharpening. Despite the weight of fatigue, his hand went to the dagger strapped to his thigh a useless gesture. He had no strength left to fight. Not properly. Not against what the Veilwood could hide.
A shadow emerged from between the trees—swift, cloaked, and armed.
The emblem on the figure's chest glinted faintly in the moonlight.
Fangborn.
Kaelen's grip on the dagger loosened. Of course they had sent them.
The Fangborn were enforcers of the Lunar Order warriors sworn to keep the bloodlines pure and the rituals unbroken. Hunters of rogues. Executioners of the Severed.
The figure removed their hood. A woman. Young. Eyes like dusk and ash.
"You're still alive," she said flatly.
"Disappointed?" Kaelen rasped.
"No. Just surprised. Most who survive a Severing bleed out by nightfall."
Kaelen gave a hollow laugh. "I suppose I was too stubborn."
She studied him, gaze flicking to the scars on his chest. Her eyes narrowed.
"You shouldn't have come here," she said. "This forest is sacred to things older than the packs. If the Echo's marked you, it won't be quiet for long."
"I didn't come here," he said. "I was thrown away."
She didn't flinch at the bitterness.
"I'm not here to fight you, Kaelen Duskbane," she said at last. "I came to warn you."
He raised an eyebrow. "Warn me? You mean kill me later?"
"The High Seeress has issued a silent hunt," she replied. "No trial. No rite. No redemption. The Severed must be purged before the Crimson Cycle ends."
Kaelen's mouth went dry. "So why are you warning me?"
"Because I don't serve Velira," she said, eyes burning. "I serve the truth."
The silence between them thickened. The river whispered things only the damned could understand.
Finally, Kaelen asked, "What do you want from me?"
She hesitated, then stepped closer.
"I want you to survive. Because you're not the only one the bond betrayed."
And with that, she tossed him something—a scroll, sealed with black wax in the shape of a broken fang and vanished back into the trees.
Kaelen stared at the scroll in his hands.
It pulsed, faintly.
Not with magic.
But with something worse.
Memory.
—
Kaelen sat in the cold, cradling the scroll as if it might explode.
The seal a broken fang etched into black wax felt warm against his fingertips. Wrong. Familiar. As if it had been made for him before he was born.
He had heard whispers of it during training. A relic that wasn't supposed to exist.
The Scroll of Severance.
Said to be written in blood. Said to hold the name of the first wolf ever rejected by the Moon.
He broke the seal.
The wax cracked like bone.
The parchment inside was strange—dry as ash, smelling of lunar silver and scorched earth. At first, the surface looked blank. But as the moonlight struck it, letters burned slowly into view, one by one, in a language older than Noctavaria's rites.
Not a spell.
A testament.
"To the Severed who survives:
You are the howl that was denied.
You are the mark that cannot be erased.
You are the blood between the bond."
Kaelen's breath hitched.
"If you hold this scroll, you have been chosen not by the Moon, but by the Echo.
The world will call you cursed.
The truth is worse.
You are the first link in a new chain."
The words shimmered once, then faded into the parchment again as if they were never there.
Kaelen's hand trembled.
His curse… was not his alone.
And the Echo whatever it was had marked him as its vessel.
He had lost his mate. His name. His future.
But now something deeper than fate had risen from the shadows to take hold of him.
And somewhere, beyond this cursed forest, others like him might exist forgotten by the Moon, swallowed by silence.
The Severed.
The scroll whispered one final word before going cold in his hand:
"Run."
Kaelen stood.
The hunt had begun.
—
The trees shifted behind him.
Not wind. Not life.
Something hunting.
Kaelen spun, the scroll now tucked into the folds of his cloak. The scar on his chest burned—a fierce, stinging heat that told him he was no longer just a man running.
He was marked.
Claimed.
And someone or something was answering the signal.
He sprinted.
Through thick undergrowth, over twisted roots, past hollow stones carved with symbols he couldn't read. His limbs screamed in protest, muscles torn from days without rest, but he didn't stop.
The air behind him warped.
They were here.
He didn't need to look to know.
The Crimson Watchers.
Ghostlike enforcers of the High Seeress cloaked in lunar blood, wielding blades etched in binding runes. They moved without sound. They hunted without scent. And they killed without leaving a mark.
Kaelen had trained beside one once.
They were told to forget their names.
To serve the Moon's purity.
To erase anything that could tarnish the Circle.
And now, those very creatures had been sent to erase him.
A low howl rippled through the trees not beast, not man, but somewhere in between. A sonic knife, sharp and wrong.
Kaelen leapt over a fallen log and rolled behind a thick veil of moss-laced stone. He pressed his back against it, heart thunderous.
They were close.
Then
A whisper near his ear:
"Don't move."
A hand wrapped around his mouth, pulling him backward into a hollow carved beneath the earth. A tunnel hidden, sacred, forgotten.
He should have resisted.
Should have fought.
But the voice was familiar.
Soft. Firm. Moon touched.
The Fangborn woman.
She sealed the tunnel behind them with a gesture Kaelen had never seen tracing twin crescents in the air.
The light vanished.
Darkness enveloped them.
And only her breath remained.
"I told you they'd come," she murmured. "You're not safe aboveground anymore."
Kaelen steadied himself, eyes adjusting.
"You know this place?"
She nodded.
"Old rogue paths. From before the temples rose. They won't follow us down here."
Kaelen stared into the darkness, clutching the scroll.
"…What am I now?"
She looked at him, truly looked, as if weighing the words against the gravity of what he had become.
"You're what happens when a bond dies but the soul refuses to."
The tunnels were older than memory.
Carved not by tools, but by instinct—claw marks etched into stone, soot on the ceilings from fires long dead. Kaelen could feel echoes in the walls. Whispers. Screams.
Not of terror.
Of grief.
"They used to bring the Severed here," the Fangborn said, her voice echoing softly. "Before the Order began burning them. Before the temples."
Kaelen ran his fingers across the wall. Symbols were scratched into the surface loops, crescents, fangs crossed over circles. Lunar bindings undone. Broken oaths.
"How many made it out?" he asked.
She paused.
"…None."
Kaelen's jaw tightened. "So why bring me here?"
"Because you're not like them." Her gaze narrowed. "You survived the Severing. You heard the Echo. That scroll answered you."
He looked down at the parchment in his hand. Its surface was cold now, the words long vanished, but he could still feel the weight of it.
A bond that defied the Moon.
A curse that remembered its own name.
She continued walking. "There's a place ahead where the Echo speaks clearer. Where the first Severed was buried. If you want answers, that's where they'll be."
They walked in silence.
The path narrowed. Bones littered the floor—some human, some wolf, some in between. Kaelen stepped over them carefully. Reverently.
At last, they reached it.
A cavern shaped like a wound.
At its center, a stone altar cracked in two. Moonlight filtered through a gap in the ceiling far above dim, blood-red, and trembling.
Upon the altar lay a single object.
A fang, black as eclipse. Cracked. Sleeping.
Kaelen stepped closer. He knew, without being told, what it was.
Eclipse Fang the weapon said to cut through bonds, through fate, through soul.
The voice returned. Inside him. Around him.
"To sever is not to destroy.
It is to choose."
Kaelen touched the fang.
Pain flooded him.
Visions. Fire. Love ripped from flesh. A howl that never ended.
And then
Clarity.
He staggered back, breathless.
The Fangborn was watching him, unmoved. "What did you see?"
Kaelen turned, and for the first time since the Severing, there was no fear in his eyes.
Only fire.
"I saw a world where bonds are not chains.
And I'm going to build it."