Beneath the Fang
The snow had just begun to fall again, soft as ash.
From the outside, the Bastion of Ironfang stood still—its granite towers unyielding, its banners black and silver against the sky. But inside its depths, beyond the public courts and war halls, Alaric moved like a ghost through passages forgotten by most of his kin. Even the sentries turned away when he passed, following old oaths not written in law but in blood.
Only five living wolves knew of the place he descended to now.
And of those five, only one still drew breath under Alaric's protection.
Beneath the Bastion's foundation lay a vault—not of gold or relics, but of memory. The Archive of Silence. Carved from obsidian and sealed by the first three Alphas, it was a repository of forbidden strategies, banished names, and ancestral bloodlines deemed too dangerous to record above ground.
A single torch flared as he entered. Not flame, but lunar-glow—cold and blue, flickering against walls inscribed with claw marks and names long struck from every official record.
He approached the central spire, placing his hand into the rune-lock.
"Alaric, son of Ceryn. Alpha of the Sixth Circle. Heir of the Flame Line."
The spire pulsed. And then it opened.
Inside stood a figure cloaked in grey steel. Tall, genderless, the face veiled by iron mesh. The voice that spoke was mechanical, without tone.
"Alpha Alaric. You have not come in thirty-eight moons. What do you seek?"
"Access to the Wyrm Protocols."
The figure stilled. "Those protocols were sealed after Caelen's purge. Their use marks a break with Council doctrine."
"I don't answer to the Council," Alaric said.
The figure did not reply. It merely turned, unlocking a vault behind it. As the door yawned open, the cold deepened. Inside hung rows of scrolls wrapped in blood-hardened skin, some still warm from the memories bound within them.
Alaric took one. Then another. Then three more.
The Wyrm Protocols were not battle strategies. They were disappearances—tactics designed to move armies without leaving signs, to change identities, to rebuild lines of communication under hostile skies. Caelen had used them once—when he vanished in the Border Rebellion's aftermath. Alaric would use them now to find him.
Back in his private war chamber, Alaric began the second phase of his work.
He summoned no generals. Only those who walked the fine line between legend and threat—those who existed outside the hierarchy but owed him loyalty forged in the crucible of shared bloodshed.
The first was Kelric the Hollow-Eyed, a scout from the Western Fractures, known for having survived six months beneath enemy territory with no backup. He carried scars across his eyes—not from blindness, but from his own doing. He had scorched them to better sense movement in the dark.
The second was Lyra Vance, once a thief-lord in the human capitals, now Alaric's ciphermistress. Her tongue could mimic a dozen accents; her hands had stolen secrets from kings and traitors alike.
The third was Cray, a former executioner who had vanished from the known territories after refusing to carry out a death sentence on a wolf pup accused of heresy. Alaric had pardoned him in secret. Now, Cray stood silent and tall, bearing the twin axes known only to the ancient Blackguard.
To them, Alaric gave no full orders. Only fragments.
"To the east, look for fire that never leaves ash."
"To the north, follow the stories not told."
"In the west, seek the wolves that howl without sound."
Each one bowed and vanished into shadow. No uniforms. No trail. Their names removed from the Bastion's rolls that very night. Even their scent patterns erased by smoke and hexed oil.
This was a war before war.
And Alaric would leave no signal until it was too late to stop him.
In private, Mira confronted him again.
"You're moving pieces outside the Council's eye," she said. "You know what they'll do if they learn."
He looked up from the map, voice low. "I'm not doing this for them. I'm doing it because I fear I may become the very thing they once accused Caelen of being. A leader who burns away dissent instead of hearing it."
"You think your brother is right?" she asked softly.
"I don't know," Alaric said. "But I know this: if he's alive, if he's moving pieces of his own, I have to find him first. Not to kill. Not yet. To understand. Because if I wait, then this won't just be civil war. It will be belief turned against belief. And we will drown in blood of our own making."
He left that night through the silent tunnel beneath the Bastion's root, cloaked in a gray mantle without sigils.
No escorts. No declaration.
Only a blade forged in the same fire that once forged his brother's.
And in the mountains to the north, where the wind sang of old names and half-dead gods, a single figure watched from afar—hood drawn, eyes gleaming gold beneath a fading moon.
He smiled as Alaric vanished into the pines.
"Too slow, little brother," Caelen murmured. "But you're learning."