The Savage Moon hung heavy above them, casting a silvered light over a broken world.
The Vale — once a sacred place of ancient power — was nothing now but a deep, charred wound upon the earth. Smoke rose from the crater, twisting into shapes that looked like screams caught in the cold night wind.
No birds sang.
No crickets whispered.
Only silence.
Lyra stood at the edge of the ruin, cloak whipping against her battered armor, watching the last remnants of the Mourning King's prison disappear into the blackened soil.
They had won.
And yet, it felt so much like losing.
The Pack had gathered behind her — what was left of it.
Less than a third remained.
Each carried wounds deeper than skin.
Eyes hollowed by the horrors they had seen, the battles they had survived.
Friends lost.
Family broken.
The old world buried beneath blood and sorrow.
Callan approached quietly.
The moonlight caught the scars newly etched across his jaw, tracing the path of a claw that had nearly ended him.
"Lyra," he said, voice low and rough. "We have to move."
He wasn't wrong.
The Mourning King might be bound, but the land was still cursed.
The shadows twisted unnaturally.
The air reeked of sorrow, thick enough to choke.
This place was no longer a place for the living.
Lyra nodded once, the simple motion feeling heavier than lifting her sword.
"Gather them," she said. "We head west."
Away from the Vale.
Away from the memories.
Toward something new.
The march was slow and brutal.
They had no healers left — those skilled in old magics had fallen during the battle.
Every step was agony for some.
Every mile cost them more strength.
Lyra refused to ride.
She walked among them, bloodied and silent, her presence a stubborn pillar against despair.
The shard was gone — consumed in the binding — but a faint ember of its fire still smoldered inside her chest.
It guided her.
It fueled her.
It whispered one unrelenting truth:
"You must rebuild."
On the third night, they found the ruins of an old fort — abandoned decades ago, half-swallowed by vines and rot.
It was not much.
Crumbled stone walls.
A collapsed tower.
A broken well.
But it was shelter.
And it could be made strong again.
Lyra climbed what was left of the tower, standing atop it under the gaze of the Savage Moon.
The wind smelled of rain and ash.
She let her voice rise into the cold air.
"Pack of the Blood Moon," she called.
"Pack of the Shard and the Sword."
Her voice carried across the ruined courtyard, heavy with the weight of their shared loss.
"We bled for the world. We bled for each other. And though we have been shattered, we are not broken."
She paused, meeting the eyes of each survivor.
"I will not lead you into the past. I will not pretend we can go back to what we were."
Her hands tightened into fists.
"But we will rise from these ashes. Stronger. Wilder. Unbreakable."
A murmur of agreement rippled through the Pack.
Small.
Wounded.
But still burning.
"We rebuild," Lyra finished.
"Here. Now. Together."
The Pack howled.
A low, mournful sound — full of grief, yes, but also of defiance.
The Savage Moon echoed the cry, bleeding silver light over them all.
And so the work began.
Days blurred into weeks.
Stone by stone, they raised the walls again.
Old wounds began to scab over.
Not forgotten.
Never forgotten.
But endured.
New bonds were forged in the fires of survival.
Callan became her right hand — her Warhound, as the Pack began to call him, half in jest, half in awe.
Drenna, fierce and broken, shaped the younger wolves into warriors worthy of the new world.
Even the pups — those who had somehow survived the horrors — were taught to snarl at the dark, to bare their teeth at despair.
The fort was renamed.
Ashwood.
A tribute to what they had lost.
And to what they would build from the ruin.
But even as they rebuilt, the curse left behind by the Mourning King stirred.
It started small.
Dreams.
Whispers in the dark.
The feeling of unseen eyes watching from the treeline.
Wolves waking with claw marks across their skin, though no enemy had breached the walls.
Lyra felt it most of all.
A gnawing at the edge of her mind.
A coldness in her blood.
The shard's fire, though consumed, had not truly died.
It had bound itself to her.
And through her, the Mourning King's last curse still had a thread into the waking world.
One night, as a storm raged over Ashwood, Lyra climbed the tower again.
The rain washed the blood from her hands.
The wind howled like a thousand lost souls.
And the Savage Moon — full and heavy — hung lower than she had ever seen it, bleeding silver tears into the black sky.
Callan found her there, sword at his hip, coat plastered to his body by the storm.
"You feel it too," he said.
It was not a question.
Lyra nodded.
Silent.
"The battle isn't over," he said. "Is it?"
"No," Lyra whispered.
The truth tasted bitter on her tongue.
"The Mourning King sleeps. But he dreams still."
And dreams, she knew, were just another kind of doorway.
Behind them, Ashwood pulsed with new life.
Fires burned in the hearths.
Children laughed.
Wolves trained with new ferocity.
But somewhere beyond the horizon, past the line where the Savage Moon touched the earth, something stirred.
Something worse than sorrow.
Worse than despair.
Something that waited for Lyra.
For the Pack.
For the world.
And next time, there would be no prison strong enough to hold it.
That night, as the rain eased and the fires guttered low, Lyra sat alone in the ruined chapel at the heart of Ashwood.
Once, long ago, the walls had held prayers.
Now, only broken statues and faded sigils watched over her.
She spread a map across the cracked stone floor — a map of a world that no longer truly existed.
Borders drawn by dead kings.
Paths leading to cities swallowed by war and rot.
Her fingers traced the edges absently.
Not searching for direction.
But remembering.
The world before.
The world that had slipped like sand through her fingers.
Footsteps sounded behind her.
Not Callan's.
Not Drenna's.
A pup.
One of the youngest.
No older than twelve winters, his golden eyes wide with fear barely masked by stubbornness.
His name was Finn.
"Alpha," he said, voice quivering.
She lifted her head, studying him.
The title felt strange on her ears, still. Heavy.
But she nodded.
Acknowledged it.
Finn shifted nervously.
"I… I had a dream," he whispered. "A bad one."
Lyra said nothing, letting the boy find his courage.
He swallowed hard.
"There was a forest," he said. "And the trees were… wrong. Black and sharp, like claws."
He shivered, wrapping his arms around himself.
"And there was a voice. It said your name."
He looked at her then, truly looked, and what she saw in his gaze sent a cold spike through her heart.
Fear.
Not of the dark.
Not of the Mourning King.
But of her.
Lyra closed her eyes.
Breathed deep.
The shard's ember pulsed once in her chest — faint, but insistent.
It was starting.
She rose slowly, crossing the distance to Finn in two strides.
Kneeling, she placed a hand on his shoulder.
Her touch was gentle, but the boy still flinched slightly.
It cut deeper than any blade.
"You are safe here," she said, forcing steel into her voice.
"I swear it."
Finn blinked back tears, then nodded fiercely.
She sent him back to the dormitories, back to the warmth of the fires and the arms of the other survivors.
But she remained kneeling long after he had gone.
Staring at the dying embers of the chapel fire.
Listening to the slow, steady beat of her heart.
Feeling the curse winding tighter around her soul.
She was changing.
Not like the wild change of the moon — the primal, blessed fury of the wolf-form.
No.
This was slower.
Deeper.
The Mourning King's legacy weaving itself into the very marrow of her bones.
She would not fall easily.
She would fight it tooth and claw, as she had fought every other battle.
But even the strongest wolves bled eventually.
And the Savage Moon, cold and pitiless above, watched in silence.
Waiting.
Meanwhile, deep beneath the roots of the distant mountains, something answered the Mourning King's dream.
A creature older than memory.
Hungrier than sorrow.
A whisper on the wind.
A promise in the dark.
The Savage Moon had wept.
And soon, it would howl.