The journey back to Frostfang felt different with Kaelin and her Iron-Keep warriors trailing like a living steel tide behind Aldric's forces. Gone were the ragged survivors limping home; now they moved with a sharpened purpose, an uneasy yet powerful alliance forged through necessity.
Even as they crossed the windswept highlands, the landscape seemed to sense their return. Villagers emerged from half-hidden burrows to watch the columns pass, drawn to the banners stitched with the Crescent Wolf and the red hammer of Iron-Keep. Children, cheeks raw with winter wind, stared in wonder at the glittering ranks of armored soldiers.
Rowena rode close to Aldric, scanning every face, every cluster of folk, her eyes never resting.
"They look at you as if you're a legend," she murmured.
He sighed. "I wish they wouldn't."
She shot him a crooked grin. "Get used to it, Wolf-King. You've stepped into the story now."
Aldric let the words sink in, tasting their weight. If stories had power — and the old priests had taught him they did — then every eye on him was another thread in the loom, weaving a destiny he could neither escape nor wholly shape.
Let them see hope, he thought. Even if I must carry it like a sword through my heart.
Return to Ashes
When Frostfang finally crested the horizon, its battered towers and splintered palisades came into view through ragged curtains of falling snow. The Iron-Keep soldiers muttered among themselves, exchanging uneasy glances.
Kaelin rode up beside Aldric, cloak snapping behind her like a thunderclap. "Your stronghold looks half-buried," she remarked bluntly.
"It is," Aldric admitted. "But not broken."
She gave him a wolfish grin of her own. "Then let's see what you do with the pieces."
They crossed through the ruined gates to a stunned welcome. Frostfang's remaining folk, many still wrapped in smoke-stained bandages, rushed forward, eyes widening at the armored giants marching behind their prince.
Children clambered onto the walls, pointing, wide-eyed. An old woman dropped to her knees, weeping. A boy waved a wooden sword in greeting.
Kaelin's soldiers looked around, clearly unsure what to make of these ragged, hopeful souls.
"This is your kingdom?" one asked.
Aldric turned to him, voice calm but edged with iron. "It is. Treat them as your own."
Kaelin nodded behind him, silencing any further complaint.
New Bonds, Old Wounds
The next two days blurred into a harsh rhythm of war councils, triage tents, and frantic rebuilding.
Brannoc oversaw the first new palisade, driving stakes into the frozen earth with curses loud enough to be heard across half the town. Kaelin's engineers, accustomed to cold iron ramparts, struggled with the softer woods and muddy soil of Frostfang's lands.
Meanwhile, Rowena organized the healers and ration supplies, managing everything with a ruthless, calm competence that earned her quiet respect even from the prickly Iron-Keep knights.
Aldric tried to be everywhere — helping hoist timbers, inspecting the new guard rotations, soothing frightened elders. He carried messages, offered blessings, listened to nightmares.
In the evenings, he found a kind of brief, fragile peace in the candlelit hall where wounded soldiers rested. Some had lost legs, others arms, but they still reached out to touch his hand, to swear loyalty again and again.
That loyalty was a fragile balm against the darkness brewing in his dreams.
The Night Reavers Stir
Three days after Kaelin's arrival, their scouts returned from the north.
They carried a stench of ash on their cloaks, their horses wild-eyed and foaming. One young scout, barely older than sixteen, dropped to his knees in front of Aldric, gasping, "My lord—"
Aldric steadied him with a hand on his shoulder. "Breathe. Tell me."
The boy swallowed hard, tears brimming. "Villages… burned. Children… taken. They—"
He broke off, choking.
Rowena stepped forward, fury twisting across her features. "The Night Reavers?"
The boy nodded. "They wear masks of bone. They drag people into the snow and… and string them up, like… like—"
His words collapsed under sobs.
Aldric felt rage pierce him, hot and bright. The White Lady had been a predator, yes, but at least she had kept her cruelty cold and precise. The Reavers, from every tale he had heard, were worse — feral, gleeful, almost animal in their violence.
There is no reasoning with them, he realized. No truce. Only steel.
The First Plan
That night, he gathered Rowena, Brannoc, and Kaelin around a battered oak table in the half-ruined hall, a single candle burning between them.
"We strike north," Aldric said without preamble. "We can't let them gain a foothold."
Kaelin drummed her fingers on the table. "I agree. But a direct assault? These are not soldiers who march in lines, Wolf-King. They scatter like rats, then swarm from the shadows."
Rowena frowned. "You'd lose half an army just trying to pin them down."
Aldric nodded grimly. "Then we bait them."
Brannoc barked a sharp laugh. "How?"
Aldric's jaw tightened. "We spread word of a supply convoy — wagons laden with grain, crossing the marsh."
Kaelin's eyes glinted. "And then?"
"We hide in the swamp," Aldric finished. "When they attack, we close the jaws."
Rowena's eyes sparked with reluctant admiration. "Dangerous. Clever."
Brannoc thumped his chest. "I like dangerous."
The Blood in the Marsh
Four nights later, Aldric stood ankle-deep in a freezing quagmire as moonlight bled through tangled birch trees. The convoy, a decoy strung together from empty crates and old sacks, trundled through the bog, guarded by a skeleton crew to keep up appearances.
Rowena crouched beside him, adjusting the straps of her wolf-pelt cloak. Her breath fogged the air, the tension between them humming like a drawn bow.
"You think they'll come?" she whispered.
Aldric nodded, eyes locked on the far treeline. "They always come."
The words felt cold in his mouth, like a truth too raw to deny.
Moments later, a rustle. Then another. Shadows moving between the silver-struck birches, shapes crawling, slithering, spreading.
The Night Reavers appeared as if rising from the earth itself — black leathers stitched with finger bones, skull-painted masks grinning in the moonlight.
There were dozens, maybe more, their bone-axes glinting.
One stepped forward, voice cracked like dry parchment. "Hand over the food. Or we take your hearts instead."
Aldric rose from the reeds, sword gleaming in moonlight. "Come take them, then."
And like a lightning strike, the swamp exploded into violence.
The Battle
It was not a neat, honorable fight. It was chaos, pure and unrestrained.
Kaelin's Iron-Keep soldiers burst from their hiding places with war-cries that shook the marsh birds from the trees. Brannoc, roaring like a bear, cut down a masked Reaver in a single blow, sending bone shards flying.
Rowena danced through the mud like a ghost, blades flashing, slicing through one Reaver's throat and pivoting to disarm another.
Aldric found himself face to face with one of the largest Reavers — a brute whose mask was painted to look like a laughing demon. Their blades clashed, sparks hissing through the night air.
The Reaver was strong, hammering at Aldric's guard with relentless, savage strikes. But Aldric was stronger in spirit, ducking low, driving his shoulder into the enemy's gut, then ramming his sword up under the ribs until the demon-mask split apart with a sickening crack.
The Reaver fell, blood soaking the swamp, eyes wide in shock.
All around, the Iron-Keep warriors worked in brutal precision, forcing the Reavers into killing fields of mud and water where their advantage turned to horror.
It was over in minutes — the Reavers crushed, broken, or fled. The swamp was red as a butcher's slab.
Aftermath
As dawn broke, the horror of it all settled over the survivors. Corpses tangled in the reeds. Crooked moonlight still reflected off pale, mask-painted faces frozen in death.
Rowena trudged up to Aldric, face smeared with blood, eyes haunted. "This was only a splinter of them," she said quietly. "There will be more."
Aldric nodded, heart heavy. "Then we will hunt them until no one wears their bones again."
She touched his shoulder, lingering. "You carry so much."
He met her gaze, pained. "So do you."
Rowena hesitated, then leaned in, pressing a soft, careful kiss to his cheek. "Then let's carry it together."
He swallowed hard, fighting an ache that was equal parts sorrow and something more tender.
"Together," he echoed.
Threads of Prophecy
The next days blurred as the battered army returned to Frostfang once more, this time victorious but changed.
Kaelin took up quarters in the rebuilt longhall, her soldiers integrated into Aldric's patrols. There was a new respect between their people, born in shared mud and death.
In quiet moments, Aldric found himself haunted by the priestess's words in Iron-Keep.
When the night comes, you will forget your name.
When you forget, you will kill the ones you love most.
The words were a poison slowly eating through the walls of his heart. Could he truly resist such a fate?
Rowena watched him carefully in those days, aware of how his thoughts slipped away from him. She refused to let him fade, always grounding him with questions, teasing smiles, or the fierce press of her fingers into his shoulder.
Even Brannoc grew gentler in his way, dragging Aldric into arm-wrestling contests or bad dice games to keep his mind busy.
The ties between them all felt fragile, but stronger for their honesty — a bond welded in war, tempered by fear, and polished by something dangerously close to love.
A Glimmer of Peace
It was the first warm morning in weeks when a glimmer of peace finally came.
Children laughed in the square again. The carpenters had finished one sturdy watchtower, and the grain stores, though meager, were holding.
Rowena found Aldric standing atop the newly repaired rampart, staring out at the green of distant fields.
"It almost looks normal," she teased.
He smiled faintly. "Almost."
Rowena stepped closer, brushing her hand against his. "And what will you do when it is normal?"
The question caught him off guard. "I… don't know," he admitted.
She laughed gently. "That's honest, at least."
Aldric let himself breathe. For one heartbeat, he allowed the warmth of her presence to soothe the barbed knots of worry in his chest.
Then a cry echoed from the town gates — the ragged alarm bell, its clang sharp as knives.
They turned together, tension snapping through their bodies.
The Riders of the Drowned Vale
A troop of horsemen thundered through the gates — mud-caked, spattered with salt, bearing standards marked with a crest Aldric did not recognize.
At their head rode a man armored in battered bronze, a cloak of sea-hawk feathers trailing from his shoulders. His beard was tangled with beads of coral, and his eyes were a cold, implacable gray.
Rowena's hand went to her sword. "Another threat?"
Aldric shook his head, studying the stranger. "I don't think so."
The horseman reined in, boots thumping onto Frostfang's cobbles. His accent was harsh, sea-wind rough:
"I am Torven, Son of the Drowned Vale," he announced. "My people come under the Crescent Wolf's banner. We have heard of your stand, and we would join it — if you will have us."
Aldric exhaled, the shock of it almost too much. Another ally — unexpected, but desperately needed.
Rowena grinned, elbowing him. "See? You are a legend."
Aldric shook his head, smiling despite the terror in his bones.
"No," he said quietly, "I'm just a wolf trying to keep his pack alive."
But as he stepped forward to clasp Torven's outstretched hand, he felt a new power blooming around him — a sense of gathering forces, drawn by the shape of something bigger than any one kingdom or any one king.
The night was coming.
He would be ready.