The Ghost in the Blood
The room fell into silence after Mira's whisper, but for Alaric, the world exploded inward.
Caelen.
The name struck him like a blade, not clean through the chest but slow—an old knife twisted into old scars. He had buried that name long ago, wrapped in ash and iron and the hard truths of survival. His brother. His blood. His first betrayal. And now, Mira had torn open the grave he had spent years pretending did not exist.
He stood motionless at the center of the chamber, hands clenched so tightly his claws threatened to pierce his own palms. His breathing slowed until it nearly stopped, not from calm but from an effort to contain the howl rising within him. Not rage—at least, not only. There was grief. Shame. Guilt. And under all of that, something worse.
Hope.
Alaric turned from Mira, his shadow cast like a scar across the runes of the chamber floor. "You're sure," he said. His voice was low, but not soft. A storm pulling itself inward.
Mira's silver-flecked eyes did not blink. "Verik's last thoughts were not of himself. They were tethered. Anchored to someone else. The imprint was fresh enough to suggest contact in the last moon cycle. He believed Caelen still lived. And more—he followed him."
Alaric stepped back as if physically struck. "Followed him?" The words were cracked ice. "Caelen died before the rebellion was even born. His blood's on the snow. I buried him myself."
"Then you buried a lie."
Alaric closed his eyes. For a moment, he was no High Alpha. No commander of the Ironfang. Just a boy again, standing by a frozen river, his older brother's blood on his chest, screaming into the wind as the Council dragged Caelen away.
He remembered Caelen's words the last time they spoke, words flung like fire:
"They will twist you, Alaric. I see it in your eyes. You want to be their sword. But we were meant to be more. They'll burn the wolf out of you until all that's left is obedience."
He had wanted to believe Caelen was mad. A traitor. A broken visionary clinging to a dead moon prophecy.
But if Verik had followed him… if others had, too…
Alaric's silence drew the attention of the room's wards. The runes pulsed red. Mira reached out gently. "We must move carefully. This is more than blood. If Caelen lives—and Verik was only a fragment of his will—then we're facing an insurgency years in the making. One that knows our customs. Our strategies. Our weaknesses."
"He knows me," Alaric whispered.
He turned to the stone table at the chamber's edge, where maps of the northern border still lay spread open, marked with scout reports and recent attacks. Suddenly, they felt hollow. Wrong. Not military moves—they were tests. Someone probing, watching. Measuring Ironfang's response.
Caelen wouldn't seek battle head-on. He never had. He'd win with ideas, not blades. And if he had survived the execution, then he had done so through followers. Through loyalty. Not the kind Alaric demanded. The kind that couldn't be commanded—only inspired.
Alaric's hands trembled. Not from fear. From the weight of what he had to do.
"Send a coded signal to the Shadow Scribes," he said to Mira. "I want eyes in the Deepvale. In the ruins beneath the Hollow Cliffs. And in every blood-oath village that's been off our maps for more than five winters. Don't use wolves. Use human runners and ravens. I want silence."
Mira hesitated. "That will mean opening ancient channels. The kind the Council ordered closed after Caelen fell."
"Then it's fitting," Alaric said. "If he still walks, I'll use the past to find him."
She stepped closer, voice low. "What will you do if you find him?"
Alaric looked at her, not as a commander, not even as a brother. As something torn between two identities. The beast that had killed for his people and the man who had once prayed for a world without that need.
"I don't know," he said. "He was my blood. My first teacher. My first disappointment. I loved him—and I cast him down. If he lives… then I must see his eyes. I must know if he truly turned, or if I was the one who did."
A long silence passed. The chamber dimmed, its old magic settling like dust.
Then Mira said, "There's something else. When I touched Verik's memory, I felt a fracture. A second presence behind Caelen's orders. A force older. A darkness not entirely his own."
"The First Moonless," Alaric said bitterly. "That name again."
"Yes. And if it speaks through Caelen… then this is more than rebellion. It's awakening."
Alaric turned to the maps again. Not as parchment—but as prophecy. And he saw something he hadn't before. Not just a threat.
A pattern.
"We are not fighting men," he said. "We are fighting belief."
The moment shifted. The walls no longer felt safe. The Ironfang's strength, once unquestioned, now felt fragile—like a fortress built on sand.
And Alaric knew what he must do.
He would not wait to be hunted by his brother's ghost.
He would become the hunter.
Even if it meant facing the blood he had once shed.
Even if it meant the war ahead would not be fought with steel alone—but with truth, and memory, and all the wounds they left behind.