Page 10

Seren

The village of the Marauq was silent, except for the soft crackling of dying embers and the distant howls of scavenger beasts circling the ruined land.

The smell of smoke and death hung heavy in the air.

The battle had ended. The cannibalistic tribe, once a plague upon the lands, was no more.

The wolves had torn through them like a storm, relentless and unforgiving. Every warrior that opposed them had been cut down, their blood soaking into the dirt. The ones who had surrendered, trembling and pleading, were spared—but only under the condition of a binding curse.

One of the Coven's elders, a woman with silvered hair and hollow eyes, had woven the curse upon them, her voice a whisper of power in the wind.

“You, who have feasted on the flesh of others, hear me.

You are bound to the law of your victims. Should you ever raise hand or tooth to consume another human being, may your own flesh decay from your bones.

May the earth refuse your remains, the sky reject your breath, and may death take you slowly, without mercy. "

The cursed ones had wept, some in rage, some in relief. They had been forced to turn away from the lands they had defiled, forever wandering, forever marked by the darkness of what they had done.

But even with them gone, there was no cleansing the past.

The village they left behind was a graveyard of horrors .

The wolves moved slowly, deliberately, their eyes sweeping over what remained.

Even though the fires had consumed most of the structures, the bones remained.

Too many bones.

Some were scattered in half-burned cooking pits, others piled in heaps, a grotesque testament to the Marauq 's ways.

The stench of roasted flesh still lingered, though whether it belonged to animals or humans, none of the wolves wanted to consider it too closely.

Draken exhaled, slow and controlled, his azure eyes scanning the devastation. "They truly believed consuming magic would make them stronger."

Vir, walking beside him, nodded grimly. "They were not entirely wrong."

They had fought men and women who moved faster than their size should allow, whose wounds closed too quickly, and whose eyes burned with something unnatural.

But in the end, it did not save them.

The Marauq were gone, their line erased from the earth, but the ghosts of what they had done clung to this place.

Vir nudged something half-buried in the ash with his boot. He bent down and lifted a human skull, small, child-sized, the bone clean and fragile in his hands. He exhaled sharply and set it back down gently, brushing soot from his fingers.

Raik, usually the first to make some dry remark, was silent. His eyes darkened as they moved deeper into the village .

Tattered huts, their roofs made of woven leaves and dried reeds, were now nothing but skeletal remains, the wooden poles that once supported them charred and collapsing.

More bones lined the ground, some broken and gnawed on as if discarded after a meal.

A dried-out hand, still wrapped in leather bracelets, clutched at the dirt beside a half-eaten femur.

The wolves had known what the Marauq were before they razed them to the ground. But walking through the remnants of their world, seeing it laid bare like this, it felt worse.

The stench of burned flesh, of decay, of old death clung to the air.

Then a sound—a sharp intake of breath, a muffled sob.

The wolves turned.

One of the elders of the Coven, an older woman named Elain, stood motionless amid the ruins, her wrinkled hands trembling as she bent to pick something up from the ash-streaked ground.

A small wooden bow, no larger than the length of her forearm, its string long since snapped.

Draken watched as she traced a shaking hand over the carvings in the wood.

Her voice, when it came, was raw.

"Trafor, my grandson's," she whispered. "He was six."

No one spoke.

They had all seen the bones of children, too small, too many, in the Marauq 's refuse pits .

The elder clutched the bow to her chest, a single tear slipping down her cheek before she straightened, hardening once more.

"Burn the rest," she said.

And they did.

As the last embers smouldered, Highclaw Draken turned to Arken, his voice firm. The remains of the battle lust growled through the wolf in his voice.

"Show me the child."

Arken studied him for a long moment before nodding. "Not yet."

Draken's eyes narrowed.

The High Priest's gaze swept over the warriors of Vargrheim, his lips pressing into a thin line.

"You carry the stench of war on you, Highclaw," he said simply. "The fire, the blood, the death. The weight of the ones lost. This is not how you stand before fate."

The other elders murmured in agreement.

Vir, ever silent, flicked his gaze toward Draken, then down at himself. Their clothes were stiff with sweat and soot, their armour streaked with ash, their hands still stained with the filth of what they had done.

Even Raik, who never took anything seriously, gave a slow exhale and muttered, "He's got a point."

The wolves of Vargrheim did not fear filth, nor did they need ceremony to meet the crone's words head-on.

But this wasn't about them.

This was about her . The Blessed one.

Draken gave a short nod, understanding. "Fine. "

The Coven's attendants led them away, guiding them toward a stone-lined stream that ran through the village, where bowls of scented oils and cloths had already been laid out.

One by one, the wolves stripped off the weight of battle, washing away the stale scent of smoke, the blood they had carried, the reminders of the ghosts they had left behind in the burned-out husk of the Marauq's camp.

No one spoke much.

Even Raik—who normally would have made some offhand joke about needing finer soaps—was quiet as he ran his hands through the cold water, watching as it swirled red and black before running clear.

When they were done, they dressed in fresh tunics provided by the Coven, and at last, Arken motioned them forward.

"Now," he said. "Now, you may meet the child."