The first howl did not come from a creature, but from the forest itself.
A long, serrated wail unfurled through the obsidian-barked trees—higher-pitched than a wolf, more jagged than a scream. It wasn't a call. It was a warning. The sound tore through the glade like a blade drawn against the glass, splintering the fragile stillness they'd barely claimed. Every branch recoiled. Every glowing beetle winked out as though snuffed by unseen fingers. The very air flinched.
Mira's breath hitched. Her small fingers curled instinctively around her pendant, which now pulsed like a second heartbeat beneath her collar. Her eyes darted to the treeline, wide with a fear that needed no name.
"They're here," Seraphine murmured. Her voice had gone cold—too calm, too steady. She turned her face toward the dark edge of the glade, eyes narrowing like someone expecting a long-lost enemy.
Lysander was already drawing his sword.
The steel hissed from its sheath like frost catching fire, and with it came an immediate shift in the air. The blade breathed in the moonlight—white-blue flames licking along its edge, casting flickering runes into the bark of the trees. The ground beneath Lysander's boots iced over in a wide, circular ring, as though winter itself had been summoned by his bloodline. The frost didn't crawl; it bloomed—sudden, sharp, and alive.
"Stay behind us," he said to Mira. His voice was a low, vibrating growl—no longer entirely human. The sword thrummed in his grip, eager, aware, almost alive. A bond had been reforged in battle, and it hungered.
The forest answered.
From the left, a blur slithered between trees—silent, eyeless, sinuous. Another howl followed. Then two. Then more. Dozens. All layered. All too close.
"They're flanking us," Seraphine said, her hand already weaving luminous arcs midair. Thin golden lines spiralled from her fingertips, forming concentric sigils that shimmered just above the earth like protective petals. Each rune burned into the air like ink dropped into water—beautiful and volatile.
"Not beasts," she continued, voice clipped. "Shades. Shade hounds."
Lysander had heard of them in whispers and nightmares, in ancient tomes and the muttered warnings of tea house regulars. But nothing in the tales had prepared him for reality.
The first hound stepped into the firelight. Its body was shadow incarnate—muscles sculpted from absence, movements sleek and serpentine. It had no eyes, yet its gaze cut through the darkness. Its mouth was wrong. Too wide. Too many teeth. The fangs gleamed silver, dripping something that hissed and vanished the instant it touched the ground.
Then it moved.
Not ran. Not leapt. Moved—instant, fluid, predatory.
It went for Mira.
Lysander didn't think. He moved on an instinct older than language.
One step. One swing. One blinding arc of glacial light.
The blade caught the creature midair, slicing through its head with surgical elegance. But there was no blood. No cry. Just silence and a hiss—like snow hitting ember—as the beast disintegrated into coiling threads of smoke, pulled skyward and gone in a breath.
But more came.
They poured from the trees like a black tide—four, six, then ten or more. Every one of them was silent. Every one of them moved in hunger. Every one of them locked on their scent, on Mira's warmth, on Seraphine's magic. They weren't hunting randomly. They were drawn.
"Eris sent them," Seraphine said through gritted teeth. Her wards flared outward, each sigil pulsing into radiant bloom before solidifying into crystalline barriers. One hound lunged and slammed into a golden wall with a sickening crunch, its body warping, shrieking silently before melting into the mist.
But the wards wouldn't hold forever.
"I need ten seconds," she said. Her breath was already ragged from the casting.
"Buy you twenty," Lysander cut in.
Then he moved.
The sword in his hand pulsed with purpose, and with each strike, the battlefield changed. Ice bloomed from the grass. Tree roots crystallised mid-twist. Every impact sent frozen shrapnel cascading into the air, shards of silent violence. He danced between hounds, blade spinning, carving arcs of winter through the darkness. Each swing was not just a strike but a sentence.
But they kept coming.
A pair struck low—one darting for Mira's exposed side. She cried out. A flash of light illuminated the terror on her face.
Lysander turned too slowly.
The ice turned faster.
A surge of raw frost exploded outward from the runes on his arms — shattering the ground in jagged spines. The hounds recoiled too late. Two were impaled mid-lunge. Another split in half as a shard of frozen light tore through its chest.
Lysander blinked.
He hadn't summoned that.
His body had.
Seraphine turned her head sharply. "Lysander—your eyes."
He didn't need a mirror to know.
They burned.
Not with fire, but with the cold gleam of the ancients. His pupils were no longer round. They had become vertical slits, lined in molten silver and encased in luminous blue.
Mira gasped softly, huddling behind a crumbling sigil wall. "You look like the paintings. The ones in the temple. The demon kings."
Lysander did not answer. He couldn't.
Something had awakened.
He parried one final strike—and then the world shifted.
The trees pulled apart like curtains torn open. And through the newly born gap, a figure stepped forward.
Not a hound.
A man. Or what had once been one.
He was tall. Draped in bone-stitched robes, wearing a rusted iron helm etched in seals that pulsed like dying stars. In his hand, a staff — topped with a screaming skull that wept black fire.
A Gravebinder.
Lysander's sword hummed with dread.
This one was no mindless phantom. He was an anchor. A master. A priest of suffering.
The Gravebinder raised his staff.
Chains of shadow erupted from the ground, seizing Lysander's ankles, wrists, and throat. They were not iron. They were heavier.
They were memories.
His knees buckled. His vision blurred.
Seraphine shouted something, but it didn't reach him.
Not truly.
Because the world had narrowed. Drowned. Darkened.
Images crashed into his mind.
His mother's voice. Her final lullaby.
The sound of silk burning.
A cry was torn from a throat too young to scream.
And then—something new.
A battlefield of ice. A horned figure kneeling. A hand reaching toward him.
"If you fall, the bloodline ends. If you rise, we rise with you."
The chains pulsed.
Lysander did not scream.
He answered.
Frost erupted from within. Not summoned.
Born.
His skin glowed faintly beneath his clothes — lines of ancient script surging from shoulder to wrist, pulsing with the mark of the Hollow Crown. They shone brighter than the moon.
With a roar, he shattered the chains — ice slicing through the dark like divine retribution.
He launched forward, the frost blade now wreathed in fire—blue and white and edged in black flame.
The Gravebinder raised his staff—
Too slow.
The sword pierced his chest with a shockwave of light.
A shriek—not human—rippled through the trees. The skull atop the staff exploded, and the flames were extinguished instantly.
The body collapsed, frozen solid, expression locked in grim finality.
The hounds scattered.
And the forest fell silent.
Lysander stood, breathing hard. Ice spread in a slow ring from where he stood, coating the ground like a crown. His eyes still burned.
But his hands no longer shook.
Seraphine exhaled slowly, lowering her defences. Her blade dimmed. Her sigils dissolved into dust.
Mira crawled forward, her voice soft. "Are they gone?"
"For now," Lysander said.
But the truth settled in his bones.
This wasn't over.
It had only just begun.