The cold hit like betrayal.
Not the kind that numbs — the kind that remembers.
Wind howled through the Whitebone Range, jagged peaks slicing the sky like broken teeth. Snow fell sideways, driven by spirits too ancient to name.
Elara pulled her fur mantle tighter.
Caelina walked beside her, hood down, face bare.
The map Caelum gave them was etched in firstblood ink — it glowed softly as they neared their destination.
A circle of cracked monoliths loomed ahead.
At their center: an arch of stone carved with old lupine script.
Zela whispered: "This place should not exist."
"Some doors were never meant to open. But once the wind finds a crack, even mountains begin to breathe."
They stepped inside the ruin.
No guards. No traps.
Just silence that pressed against the lungs.
The Temple of the First Howl was not built — it was grown. The walls pulsed faintly, as if made of bone and ice. Murals curled across every surface — wolves not as beasts, but as gods. Wolves with wings. Wolves with fire in their eyes. Wolves that walked upright and wept stars.
At the center, a massive stone basin. Empty.
Caelina approached.
Her palm burned.
The silver in her blood glowed.
Elara reached for her. "Wait—"
Too late.
Caelina touched the basin.
The ruin shuddered.
The murals moved.
They saw the past.
Not as memory — but as witnesses.
A girl running through night.
The first wolf not born of fur, but of grief.
The girl falling, breaking. Her scream turning into the first howl — not of rage, not of conquest — but of loss.
And then — a shadow descending from the sky.
Not a god. Not a demon.
A dealmaker.
"Your pain shall echo in others," it said.
"Let your cry become their curse."
"Let the blood remember you, even when the heart forgets."
The shadow touched the girl's chest — and from her broken ribs sprouted the first werewolf line.
Elara stumbled back, breath ragged.
Caelina collapsed to her knees.
"She wasn't chosen," Caelina whispered.
"She was sacrificed."
The first howl had not been divine.
It had been engineered.
"When the ancestors bury truth in stone, they hope snow will be enough to hide the rot."
Suddenly, the wind shifted.
A growl echoed from deeper within the ruin.
They were not alone.
Out of the dark crept a creature made of bones and ice — its form shifting between wolf and mist. No scent. No heat. Just hunger.
Zela's flame flickered. "That's not a guardian."
"No," Elara said.
"It's the debt."
The girl's pain hadn't just echoed — it had become something.
The creature lunged.
Elara drew her crescent blades.
Zela spun her fire into a ring.
Caelina stood without shifting.
She raised her palm — the silver veins now pulsing like a second heartbeat.
"You were forged from suffering," she whispered.
"But you do not own mine."
A pulse of silver light shot from her chest.
The creature froze mid-leap, snarling in pain.
And then — crumbled into ash.
Silence.
Then, the basin filled — with memory.
A liquid silver pool.
At its surface floated a single name, glowing in First Tongue.
Caelina reached for it.
But Elara stopped her. "Not yet."
"Why?"
"Because names are power. And the one that cursed us might still be listening."
As they exited the temple, the sky cracked open.
Not from storm.
From prophecy.
The red moon blinked.
And for the first time in over two hundred years…
It howled.