Every king needs a beast who remembers how to bite.
"Before there were crowns… there were fangs.
Before there were empires… there were boys too angry to die."
— Old Garifari Combat Rite, forbidden under Pact Law
I.
Milo Wade was not born in a palace, nor raised in warm halls.
He came up hungry, in the gutters of Sorrowhold, where bones were cheaper than bread and names were earned through pain.
He was muscle before he was man.
He was war before he was wanted.
And through it all — through bare-knuckle brawls, through the spoiled rice he ate with Reginal beneath broken roofs, through the fists and fire and frostbite — one truth haunted his eyes:
He was never enough.
Never strong enough to protect.
Never fast enough to escape.
Never loud enough to be heard.
That changed the day he entered the Bloodhowl Pit.
II.
The Pit was hidden beneath Gravemount, in a place even the Emberborn feared — a space not carved by stone, but by memory and rage. The walls bled. The torches screamed. It was said the Pit fed on ego — and returned only those strong enough to become monsters.
To become Fangbeasts.
Kammy had tried to stop him.
"You don't have to become something else, Milo," she'd said.
"You're already enough."
"No," Milo had growled.
"Enough would've stopped the bastards who hurt my brother. Enough wouldn't have let him bleed for me."
He stripped down.
Walked barefoot into the Pit.
And it sealed behind him.
III.
Inside, he met no enemies.
Only himself.
Ten thousand versions of him.
Each one stronger. Faster. Colder.
He fought them all.
And every time he struck one down, it whispered his secrets back at him:
"You still hate your mother."
"You still fear dying without being remembered."
"You love Reginal more than you admit."
The worst came last.
A version of him in full Fangbeast armor — bigger, meaner, smiling like war incarnate.
It didn't fight him.
It offered him a hand.
And Milo, bleeding from every knuckle, chest heaving, eyes full of fire, looked into his own monstrous reflection and said:
"If I take your hand… I don't stop being me."
"You just become mine."
IV.
The Pit exploded in light.
When he emerged, Milo was… changed.
Not taller.
Not louder.
But clearer.
His eyes were ringed in red. His voice carried the growl of storms. And carved into his arms were the sigils of the Bloodhowl Pact — ancient beast-marks once worn by god-slayers of the first wars.
He no longer hit things.
He devoured obstacles.
He was now not just Reginal's brother.
He was Reginal's Fang.
V.
When Kammy saw him, she didn't flinch. She smiled.
"You don't look like a man anymore."
"Good," Milo replied.
"Men hesitate."
"And you?"
"I hunt."
END SIDE CHAPTER.
The beast has risen. Let the gods tremble.
⚔️ NEXT: CHAPTER IX — The Banner of Bone
The fallen city of Soltharyn becomes a war-signal. Reginal raises a new banner — one that no kingdom has ever dared display. And far beneath the oceans, an ancient force begins to move.