The smoke had hardly cleared from the collapse of the White Lady's fortress when the weight of the future crashed over Aldric's shoulders like a landslide. Frostfang had been saved, but in its half-ruined, blood-streaked streets, the true battle was only beginning.
Even the sunrise felt raw, like a half-healed wound. Pale gold light spilled across the marshes, illuminating broken walls and grieving villagers who emerged from hiding, stunned, as if they'd been asleep for centuries. Children clutched mud-smeared dolls. Mothers wept openly at the names they could not yet bear to speak.
Aldric rode at the head of the returning warriors, Crescent Wolf banner fluttering above his head. Behind him, Rowena and Brannoc rode shoulder to shoulder, both mud-caked and hollow-eyed but resolute. They passed through the shattered gates of Frostfang — or what was left of them — to the hush of hundreds of townsfolk who had gathered to see the victors return.
They looked at Aldric with eyes too exhausted to shine with hope.
He swallowed hard. They need me now, more than ever.
Rowena leaned closer, voice quiet but sure. "You must speak to them."
He nodded, though the words twisted in his mouth. A deep weariness bit at the edge of his soul, a bone-deep ache from weeks of war and loss. But a wolf did not bow to weariness.
He dismounted, boots squelching in the mud, and stepped onto a broken chunk of stone that once marked the market square. Raising his voice, he called out:
"People of Frostfang! Listen!"
They lifted their heads, the only movement in the tense stillness.
"The White Lady is gone," Aldric declared, letting every syllable land like a hammer. "Her reign is broken. You are free."
A wave of emotion surged through the crowd — a shiver of disbelief, a rising chorus of hope as hands clutched hearts, tears fell, voices broke into ragged cheers.
"But," Aldric continued, steady, "this is only the beginning. Look around you — walls destroyed, fields burned, children orphaned. The darkness left scars that will not fade tomorrow."
A hush fell again.
"That is why we will rebuild," he vowed, raising the sword that had slain the White Lady, still stained black. "We will make this place strong again — stronger than ever! Frostfang is ours, and we will shape its future with our own hands!"
The shout that rose this time had true power behind it, as if every heart found its voice together.
Rowena stepped to his side, offering a fierce smile. "Nicely done," she whispered.
He glanced at her, gratitude sparking between them. "Couldn't have done it without you."
She nudged him playfully, even through exhaustion. "I'll remember that."
---
The Council of Wolves
They gathered what remained of the town's leaders that afternoon in a stone hall that still stood, though most of its roof had caved in.
Brannoc pounded one huge fist on a scorched table. "First priority is food. We've barely enough for a week. If we don't get supplies before winter, half these people will starve."
Rowena added, "And there will be opportunists. Bandits. Traitors. Even rival clans might see us weakened and attack."
Aldric nodded grimly. "Send scouts to the north roads, see what survived the fires. We'll need to rally every farmer and hunter who can spare a hand. And we must reinforce the walls — even a pile of earth is better than these torn-down gates."
An older woman, Tilda, who had once run the town's grain accounts, lifted a shaking hand. "My lord," she rasped, "how do we pay for this?"
Aldric hesitated. Coins cannot rebuild a spirit.
"We pay with courage," he answered softly. "With sweat and loyalty. If there is no coin, then let the bonds of our people be stronger than gold. We share what we have."
Tilda nodded with tears in her eyes.
Rowena, ever the practical one, leaned forward. "And there's the prophecy, Aldric. Don't think I forgot."
Aldric stiffened. "Say it."
Rowena's green eyes turned sharp as knives. "The White Lady is only the first shadow. The true night comes when the wolf forgets its own name."
A cold weight settled in Aldric's gut. "What do you think it means?"
Rowena frowned. "I think it means you."
A muscle in Aldric's jaw ticked. He wanted to argue — to throw the very idea away. But he could not. He had seen prophecy spill out like a slow poison before, winding through families until it strangled them.
He let out a shaky breath. "Then we watch for it," he said, voice hard as steel. "If I ever forget who I am, you remind me."
Rowena's face softened, just for a heartbeat. "Always."
---
The Tears of the Lost
In the days that followed, the work of rebuilding Frostfang began.
Children gathered bricks and stacked them in new walls. Carpenters returned from hiding and put hammer to splintered timber. Women tended to the wounded, and healers laid out poultices that smelled of mint and lavender, trying to soothe away rot from weeks of infection.
Aldric walked among them, sleeves rolled high, helping mend broken fences, lifting beams, comforting crying children. He was the son of a king, but here he was just another pair of hands, and the people loved him for it.
At night, he could barely sleep. Visions clawed at him — the White Lady's face, the moment of her death, that throne of skulls etched behind his eyes. Sometimes he'd jolt awake in a cold sweat, sword reaching for enemies who were long dead.
Rowena stayed close, often sleeping near enough that their breathing fell into the same rhythm. When he woke shaking, she would place a hand on his chest and remind him to be here, now, not in some hellish dream.
The bond between them deepened in those quiet hours. It was not the honey-sweet passion of a bard's tale, but something fiercer and older, forged in the same crucible of blood.
---
A Fading Sun
One evening, three weeks after the fall of the fortress, a scout arrived on a foaming, half-starved horse, bearing a torn scrap of parchment sealed with black wax.
Rowena read it first, her face draining of color. "It's from the north," she murmured, voice tight. "The Night Reavers."
Aldric frowned. "I thought they were broken a generation ago."
Rowena shook her head, knuckles white on the letter. "They're back. And they know we are weakened."
Aldric took the parchment, reading the single line that made bile rise in his throat:
Frostfang belongs to the night.
He crumpled the parchment, rage boiling in his chest.
Brannoc, who'd overheard, growled like an angry bear. "Then we kill them too."
Aldric closed his eyes for a moment, breathing, thinking. Too many battles. Too many graves.
"No," he said, surprising even himself. "We cannot fight them the same way. We are too broken. We will need alliances."
Rowena's eyebrow lifted. "Alliances? With whom?"
Aldric looked toward the western hills, where rumors of the Iron-Keep tribes had always drifted like half-remembered ghosts.
"With everyone who fears the night," he said softly. "They will come for all of us, not just Frostfang."
---
The Pact of Wolves
Within days, Aldric, Rowena, and a small company rode out across the marshes to the Iron-Keep.
The lands changed as they traveled: marsh giving way to tangled forests, then to broken highlands scattered with boulders like giant bones. The air grew sharp, the kind of cold that bit into your lungs and made your eyes water.
They reached the Iron-Keep on the fifth night, a fortress of granite and black iron perched atop a cliff, looking down at the world like a brooding god.
Aldric dismounted, ignoring the ache in his legs, and stepped forward alone.
A woman emerged from the gates to meet him — tall, with a chainmail coat that gleamed like fish scales, and a blade that looked as if it had been forged from a storm itself. Her hair was blue-black, cut to her chin, eyes sharp as falcons.
"Frostfang sends beggars?" she called down, voice mocking.
Aldric straightened. "Frostfang sends wolves."
The Iron-Keep soldiers behind her laughed, but the woman's expression shifted, curious despite herself.
"Speak, then, Wolf-King," she said.
Aldric inclined his head, careful, measured. "The Night Reavers rise. They will come here, as they came for us. I would stand beside you against them."
The woman considered, fingers tapping the hilt of her sword. "Why should I trust a wolf?"
Aldric stepped closer, letting his voice ring. "Because the night will not care whose banner you follow, once it eats the world."
A hush fell over the courtyard, a cold wind stirring banners marked with a red hammer.
Finally, the woman nodded. "My name is Kaelin of the Iron-Keep," she said. "You will dine with me tonight, and then we will speak of war."
---
Prophecy's Shadow
That night, they gathered in Kaelin's longhall, a place that smelled of pine smoke and horse hide. The fires burned bright in twin hearths, but even their warmth could not drive away the sense of something vast and cruel stirring beyond the walls.
Aldric listened to the Iron-Keep elders trade tales of the Reavers — how they stole children, how they flayed the skin of traitors and hung it on blackened trees as a warning. It made the White Lady's horrors look almost tame.
Then an old priestess, wrapped in sealskin robes, stepped forward, her eyes clouded with prophecy.
"Wolf-King," she rasped, pointing a bony finger straight at Aldric. "Beware the poison that steals the mind. When the night comes, you will forget your name. And when you forget, you will kill the ones you love most."
Rowena tensed at his side. Aldric's mouth went dry.
"Enough," Kaelin snapped, waving the old woman away. "He has had his share of curses already."
But Aldric could not unhear it. The poison that steals the mind.
Was it a warning of betrayal? Of memory loss? Of some greater curse yet to come?
He squeezed Rowena's hand under the table, drawing strength from the warmth of her palm. She looked at him, green eyes fierce, unafraid.
"We will face it," she whispered.
Together, Aldric vowed silently.
---
The Call to War
At dawn, Kaelin pledged a thousand Iron-Keep spears to Frostfang's defense, swearing their blades to Aldric's cause.
They left together on the wind-bitten road, a new army behind them, a new chance to stand against the encroaching dark.
Aldric felt a fire kindling in his soul once more, fierce and unbroken. Whatever trials the night would send, whatever poison might one day steal his memories, he would fight until the very end.
Because he was the Wolf-King.
And no curse, no prophecy, no darkness would ever truly claim him.