The village prepared for war the only way it knew how—frantic, messy, and with shaking hands.
Kael stood outside the supply hut as people rushed past him, shouting and clutching anything with an edge. A pitchfork dragged along the dirt. A woman gripped a butcher's cleaver, the blade still stained from this morning's pig. Children carried pots. An old man had tied a sickle to the end of a broom handle.
No one looked ready.
Inside, the smell of leather and oil hit Kael like a slap. His fingers hovered over the racks of equipment—fishing spears, old short swords dulled by years of disuse, cracked bows with too few arrows.
A hand reached over him and pulled down a light hunting knife.
"Take this," Daren said, pressing it into Kael's palm. "It won't break on you."
Kael looked up. His brother's face was smeared with dirt and calm. His sword was strapped to his back, the same one their mentor had given him last spring. Daren was only three years older, but he looked like someone carved from certainty.
Kael closed his fingers around the knife's leather grip. "Is this really happening?"
Daren nodded. "Wolves don't just circle the village in daylight. Something's pushing them."
Kael glanced at the treeline beyond the fields. Already, the sun was dipping low. Shadows stretched long, like claws.
Outside the hut, villagers were forming a loose ring around the center square. Loran, their mentor, barked orders from the old well.
"Keep your back to someone! Stay out of the open! Watch the flanks!" he shouted.
People listened because they were too afraid not to. Mothers tied rags around their children's arms like makeshift armor. The baker clutched a rolling pin in one hand and a rusted handaxe in the other. A farmhand tried to bend a shovel into a pike.
Kael breathed hard, trying to steady the tremor in his legs.
Daren gave him a look. "Stick to the edge. Guard the flanks. You're not here to prove anything, Kael."
He nodded, swallowing the urge to argue.
---
They formed a half-circle around the village square—twenty villagers, armed with tools and desperation. Kael stood at the left flank, near the goat pen. Behind him, two elderly men held spades like spears.
The wind stilled. The last bird call faded.
Kael's knuckles went white around his grip. He could feel his heart in his throat, thudding like a war drum. This wasn't a training exercise. There would be no tap to signal a safe surrender, no Loran to pull him out if things went wrong.
Daren moved into position across the square, sword drawn. Their eyes met once. Kael nodded. Daren didn't.
Then came the howls.
It started as one voice—long, low, full of hunger—and then grew into a rising chorus. The forest moved.
Shapes burst from the brush. Low shadows with gleaming eyes and wet snarls.
The wolves came.
Kael barely had time to blink before one was leaping over the fence at him. He ducked, slashed wildly with his knife, and felt it connect with fur and flesh. The wolf yelped and scrambled off.
To his right, someone screamed. A man collapsed, blood pooling from his leg. Another villager stepped over him and drove a broken fence post into a wolf's throat.
The pack surged through the village like water through a broken gate. Wolves tore into fences and people, scattering defenders. Kael saw Loran drive his blade through two at once before disappearing behind the well. Daren shouted orders and cut down one, then another.
Kael pressed himself against a shed, panting, knife raised. He caught flashes of battle—claws, firelight, blood.
It was chaos. He saw someone he knew—Mira, the girl who sold eggs—dragging a child behind her as a wolf lunged. A pitchfork stopped it inches from the child's face.
Then the alpha came.
It stepped into the square like a storm wrapped in fur—twice the size of any normal wolf, with streaks of black and silver running down its back. Its eyes glowed—not yellow, but an eerie molten red, like iron pulled from a forge.
Kael froze.
The wolf opened its jaws and roared—not howled—roared.
Kael watched it pounce. One man was ripped from the ground. Another tried to stab it and was flung against a wall.
Daren turned toward it. His sword flashed.
"No—!" Kael shouted, too late.
Daren swung. The alpha dodged and slammed into him, sending him tumbling across the dirt.
Something broke inside Kael.
He sprinted.
The world shrank to the space between him and the wolf. All noise fell away. He could barely feel his legs. The knife in his hand was too small, too light, too useless—
But he didn't stop.
The alpha turned, sensing him. Its red eyes flared.
Kael leapt.
He drove the knife up under its jaw, burying it to the hilt.
The wolf snarled in pain—deep, animal, furious—and tried to twist away. But it was already falling. Wounded. Slowed by the villagers' desperate defense.
Kael tumbled to the ground with it. The body slammed into him, heavy and hot.
Silence.
Then shouting. Not panicked, but stunned.
The wolves—what few were left—broke and fled into the trees.
Kael lay still, gasping. His knife was gone, buried in the alpha's throat. Its glowing eyes stared straight into his.
And then—
Something passed between them.
Not light. Not warmth.
Threads.
They poured out of the alpha's gaze like smoke, but thinner—lines, shimmering and endless, each one dancing in a current he couldn't feel.
One thread reached for him.
Kael screamed as it sank into his eye.
Pain. Burning. Freezing. Unmaking.
Then—vision.
He sat up, trembling, and looked around.
The world was woven. Threads connected everything. From person to person. From blade to wound. From the trees to the sky. Some threads pulsed with feeling—fear, rage, sorrow. Others buzzed with unseen force—gravity, tension, age.
He saw a thread between a crying child and their fallen father. A thread glowing dimly over Loran's chest, flickering like a candle. And a frayed, silver-white thread connecting him to—
His brother.
Daren lay across the square, unmoving.
Kael reached out without thinking. His fingers brushed the thread.
And in a flash of panic, it snapped.
The threads vanished.
The world returned to normal. Almost.
---
Kael knelt beside the wolf's corpse, chest heaving.
The knife was still in its throat.
Its glowing eyes were gone.
But the thread it left inside him wasn't.
> And as the world unraveled into threads, Kael realized he had just killed something far older than a wolf… and become something far stranger than a boy.