"The corruption is not chaos; it is pure, terrible purpose. And the Alpha King's heart, the thing he loves, is simply the last lock on the ancient cage."
3rd POV
Silverback Forest was a contradiction of life and decay. By day, its dense canopy filtered the weak winter light into shards of silver and gray; by night, it became a breathing, suffocating shadow. Deep within the oldest core, where the roots of a thousand‑year‑old oak formed a natural subterranean cavern, the air was not cold; it was hungry. In the center of the cavern, the hunger glowed. It was not fire, nor a physical form, but a coalescing mass of shadow and gold, a lightless sun that pulsed with a deep, resonant hum. This was Vorath, ancient alpha and appetite, an entity of avarice waking after centuries of forced slumber.
