Night hung low over the pines, heavy and breathless. The Wardens made camp in a cold glade beneath a crescent moon, their voices quiet, their movements sharp. Fires burned small and low, casting twitching shadows across taut faces. No one mentioned the howl. They didn't have to. It was still in the trees.
Rowen sat apart, sharpening his blade with slow, deliberate strokes. The edge gleamed like frost. He watched the others in silence—how they checked their gear twice, how they avoided staring too long into the dark. These weren't green soldiers. They were people who'd seen things that stained the bones.
Elys approached, her shadow long and lean.
"The howl you heard," she said quietly, "wasn't natural. Wasn't born here. It was touched."
Rowen nodded once. He didn't ask what she meant. He already knew.
The attack came just before dawn.
A cold wind rushed through the trees, killing every ember. Then came the silence—the true silence. Even the insects fled. Then mist, too thick for breath. Then—
—screams.
They came from the dark in a rush: twisted bodies, half-man, half-beast, eyes gleaming with hunger and malice. Lesser lycanthropes—not full-blooded werewolves, but cursed things driven mad by the Veil.
Three Wardens died in the first charge. One lost his head before he could scream. Another was pulled into the brush, blood streaking the moss.
Rowen moved like a storm.
He didn't just fight—he erupted. Where others parried, he lunged. Where they faltered, he tore through. A snarl carved into his lips, eyes burning, he fought like a demon unleashed. His blade danced in the moonlight, precise and cruel.
One creature lunged—he stepped aside, twisted, buried his knife through its skull. Another leapt—he drove it into the dirt with a kick, then snapped its neck with a twist. He did not hesitate. He did not think. He killed.
Even the Wardens faltered at the sight. Elys, blood smeared across her cheek, watched him cleave through the third beast like it was cloth. Something primal radiated from him.
The creatures pulled back briefly—only to regroup and charge again.
A Warden screamed. "Gerran's been bitten!"
Rowen turned to see the young man pinned, his arm mangled and bleeding black. Elys reached him first, slicing the beast off his back before it could finish him.
They rallied, finally—forced the creatures into retreat with spear and fire. The last one howled once, then vanished into the trees, mist curling after it like a cloak.
The glade reeked of blood and ash.
Five were dead. Two more wounded. One of them—Gerran—bitten.
He sat against a tree, trembling. His arm already blackening, veins spidering up his neck. He knew.
"I can feel it," he whispered. "It's in me. The moon... it calls."
Elys crouched beside him, silent.
"I'll turn," he said. "Won't I?"
"Yes," she said.
He closed his eyes and exhaled, long and slow. "Then you know what I must ask."
Rowen and several of the Wardens looked toward him.
"Let me go out with dignity," Gerran said. "A clean death, before it takes me."
Elys studied him, eyes hard as granite.
"You made an oath, Gerran," she said, voice low and resolute. "And I will not allow you to abandon it."
She reached into her satchel and drew a piece of silver etched with curling runes. With swift, practiced movements, she carved a protective circle into the dirt and placed the warded token at its center. Her fingers bled as she whispered an incantation in the Old Tongue. The runes flared with pale blue fire, then faded to a quiet glow.
"You will not be free of the curse," she continued, "but the pull of the moon will not claim your mind. You'll change, yes—but you'll do so in your own name, not as a beast."
Gerran stared at her, awe and terror wrestling in his face. "Is that even possible?"
"It is now," Elys said. "You'll live with it. Fight with it. Control it—or I will end you myself."
Gerran bowed his head, tears slipping down his cheeks. "Thank you. I think."
They built the pyres in silence. Friend and foe alike. When the flames rose, the trees seemed to lean back.
Brell, one of the younger Wardens, stared into the fire.
"They weren't born that way," he said. "Something's making them. Driving them mad."
Elys nodded. "They never used to coordinate. Never fought like a pack."
Rowen stared at the bodies as they burned. One of them—the first he'd killed—twitched in the flames.
A voice rose from the crackling wood. Soft. Familiar.
"Ash and root... ash and root..."
He didn't move. Didn't breathe. Just listened.
The mist was rising again.
And he didn't know whether it came from the forest—or from within.