The moon hung low, its pale face veiled, not by cloud, but by the breath of the forest.
Lyra stood at the river's edge, where the training grounds faded into old trees.
Behind her, Ciran had long since vanished into the trees. Ahead, the air shimmered with a strange hush.
She moved in silence, steps familiar, unwilling.
Her old den wasn't far.
Half-swallowed by ivy, the door of woven bark and bone still creaked the same.
No one had touched it.
Inside, dust curled in the shafts of silver light.
The mat she used to sleep on still held the faint scent of wolf oil, crushed leaves, and old sorrow.
A memory waited in the shadows.
One she'd buried too deep to kill.
She reached into the hollow carved in the wall.
Her fingers closed around something soft.
A red leather cord.
She pulled it free.
Kael had given it to her the night they finished their first trial.
It was meant to be worn around the wrist, tied once for trust, twice for protection.
Her breath caught. The knot was still there.
He had burned that day—laughing, golden, wild.
They'd stumbled out of the Iron Thicket bruised and victorious, their kills hanging from their backs.
"You never stop moving," Kael had said, watching her pace along the cliff's edge. "Like you're waiting for something to catch you."
She'd shrugged, defensive.
"I just don't like stillness."
Kael had smiled then, something strange behind his eyes.
He'd taken off the red cord from his own arm and wrapped it around her wrist.
"I'll catch you," he'd said. "If you fall."
The warmth turned cold only weeks later.
She remembered standing in the Circle of Marks, heart pounding, surrounded by the whole pack.
Her bond-mark had glowed faintly, responding to Kael.
But Kael had said nothing. Hadn't looked at her.
When the Elders asked who he chose to mark, he said another name.
Quietly.
Flatly.
Not even a glance in her direction.
Lyra had stood there, throat locked, the red cord burning around her wrist like a chain.
Later, when she confronted him, he wouldn't meet her eyes.
"You're not strong enough," he said.
Four words.
Enough to break her.
Now, in the hollow den, the leather felt dry. Brittle.
Lyra ran her fingers over the knot.
Then she stepped outside.
The river still whispered past the trees, soft and cold. She walked to the edge.
Watched the water swirl.
And she let the cord drop.
It vanished without ceremony.
Gone.
The leaves rustled. A voice, low as the river's undertow:
"The System doesn't give marks by accident."
Ciran stood at the tree line, shadows clotting around him like a second cloak.
She turned, unsure if he meant the one Kael refused… or the one now glowing on her wrist.
Ciran's eyes were sharp. Knowing.
"You think your strength was forged in rejection," he said. "But it wasn't."
She blinked. "Then what was it forged in?"
He stepped closer. The air shifted.
"The Luna doesn't choose the wolf you are." His voice frayed at the edges, like wind through dead leaves.
"She chooses the shadow you'll cast when you burn."
That night, Lyra dreamed of silver flame.
The world burned in quiet light—white fire licking the edges of a forgotten ruin. In the center stood a wolf with no face, only a crescent mark on her brow.
She spoke in a voice like cracking ice:
"The Fang's pride drowned the old world in blood.
The System is just the corpse left standing.
But I am the throat it could not silence.
You, daughter of ash, are not chosen by blood.
You are chosen by what you lost.
Rise.
Or fall.
But the moon watches."
The vision shattered with a single chime. A System alert flickering at the edge of sleep:
The chime echoed, not in her ears but in her teeth.
The chime slithered into her skull, not sound, but the scrape of a claw against bone:
[Luna Reclamation]
The moon knows your true name.
(Something ancient uncurls…)
She woke before dawn.
Her hand still glowed faintly where the red cord once rested.
Lyra rose. Wrapped her cloak tighter.
And stepped onto the trail that led back to the Crimson Fang's border.
Not as the girl Kael once turned away.
But as something far older, far colder.
The wind carried Ciran's final words like a blade trailing her footsteps:
'If you go back, go back as something they can't ignore.'
Lyra bared her teeth—not a snarl, but a promise.
Let the System's chime become a war drum in her blood.
Pack Judgment awaited.
Let them try to weigh her soul now.