The dawn came red.
Not the gentle blush of sunrise, but a blood-washed glow that stained the horizon, spreading like a wound across the sky. The storm had passed, yet its memory lingered in the air — heavy, charged, alive. The ruins of the Guild still smoked behind Ethan as he fastened the last strap of his travel cloak.
The world felt larger now. Too large.
Lyra tightened the bindings around her serpent's neck, the creature hissing softly as it coiled protectively around her shoulders. "You're certain about this?" she asked without looking up.
Ethan's gaze swept over the horizon — an endless sprawl of mist-cloaked valleys and blackened forests stretching beyond sight. Somewhere beyond those ridges lay the heart of the Outer Wild — a place where the strongest beasts roamed, where the oldest powers slept.
"I don't have a choice," he said quietly. "If we stay, we wait for the next storm. If we move forward, we might find the strength to stop it."
Lyra studied him for a moment, then gave a small nod. "Then we go forward."
Shadowfang's golden fire flared briefly in approval.
They left at sunrise.
---
The road was not a road anymore.
It had once been a trade path between Guild outposts, now swallowed by nature and time. Vines clawed through cracks in the stone. Trees leaned inward as if whispering secrets to each other, their roots gnarled and swollen like veins.
Every step carried weight. Every sound felt watched.
Hours passed in silence, the only noise the crunch of boots and the low hum of beasts walking beside their masters. The deeper they went, the less human the world became.
The air thickened — heavier, alive with invisible threads of energy. Leaves glowed faintly with veins of light, insects shimmered in colors no natural creature should bear. The Wild was not merely wilderness. It was awake.
Lyra broke the silence first. "Do you ever wonder what's at the heart of all this?"
Ethan didn't answer immediately. His eyes followed a flock of pale-winged ravens circling far above. "The Masters used to say the Wild was chaos," he said. "But maybe they called it that because they couldn't control it."
She gave a small laugh. "You talk like a philosopher now."
"Maybe freedom makes you think too much."
They shared a faint smile — the kind that came less from joy than from exhaustion.
---
By dusk, they reached the first ruins.
A shattered tower rose from the forest floor, its black stones choked by roots and moss. Glyphs ran along its base — old, carved deep, glowing faintly with a silver pulse. Shadowfang growled low, golden flames licking the air in warning.
Ethan approached slowly, running his hand along one of the markings. The surface was cold.
"This isn't Guild work," he murmured. "Older. Much older."
Lyra crouched beside him. "Could it be pre-Oath?"
He nodded slowly. "Before the chains. Before control."
The air shifted — a hum, deep and resonant, vibrating through the ground. Shadowfang's hackles rose. The serpent around Lyra's shoulders hissed sharply, coils tightening.
Then, without warning, the glyphs flared to life.
A shockwave rippled outward, scattering dust and light. Ethan stumbled back, raising an arm against the sudden glare. When the light dimmed, a faint image remained — a projection, shimmering in midair.
A woman.
Or what was left of one.
She stood barefoot on the broken stones, robes flowing like mist, her face half-hidden beneath a crown of jagged metal. Her voice came not as sound but as a resonance — vibrating inside their skulls, words ancient yet unmistakably clear.
> You who walk unchained… you stand upon the grave of the First Hunt.
Ethan froze. "What are you?"
> A memory. A warning.
The vision flickered, unstable, her form fading in and out like a dying flame.
> The Oath was born here, forged in fear of the Wild's heart. They thought chains could tame creation. They were wrong.
Lyra stepped forward. "You're saying the Guild didn't create the Oath?"
> No. They merely bound it. Twisted it. But its seed… lies deeper. Beneath the roots of the world. Where the Elder Bonds sleep.
The words hit Ethan like a strike of lightning.
Elder Bonds. Shadowfang's voice echoed faintly in his mind, a growl threaded with awe.
> She speaks truth. The oldest beasts — the ones who shaped the laws of this world.
Ethan's pulse quickened. "How do we reach them?"
The vision's eyes turned toward him — burning white now, devoid of pupils.
> Only the unbound may walk that path. But beware, hunter. The heart of the Wild devours both tyrant and savior alike.
Then, with a burst of silver light, she was gone.
Silence swallowed the ruins once more.
---
For a long while, neither of them spoke.
Finally, Lyra exhaled. "Elder Bonds," she whispered. "If what she said is true, that's… beyond everything we've known."
Ethan looked at Shadowfang, whose flames pulsed faintly, almost reverently.
> They are the source. The reason beasts like me exist.
Lyra frowned. "Then why would the Guild hide that?"
Ethan's jaw tightened. "Because chains need ignorance to hold."
He turned away from the ruins, eyes fixed on the forest ahead. "We keep going."
Lyra hesitated. "Into the heart?"
He nodded once. "Into the heart."
---
The deeper they went, the stranger the world became.
The ground itself seemed alive, breathing faintly beneath their boots. Rivers flowed with light instead of water. Trees bent toward them, branches creaking softly as though drawn to the pulse of their beasts. Time lost its shape — daylight bled into twilight without warning, and stars appeared in skies that should have been sunlit.
Sleep came fitfully. When Ethan closed his eyes, he dreamed of chains melting into rivers of flame, of beasts with eyes like suns devouring the heavens.
And beneath it all, a voice whispered his name.
Not Shadowfang's. Something older.
> Come.
He woke gasping, the echo still ringing in his skull. The fire had burned low, Lyra asleep beside the faint glow of her serpent. Shadowfang watched him silently, eyes golden and knowing.
> You heard it too, Ethan whispered.
The beast inclined its head. The Wild calls to those it recognizes.
"Recognizes?"
> You carry its mark, Ethan Veyra. You broke the Oath. You severed the leash that bound both man and beast. The Wild remembers its own.
A chill rippled through him. "Then it wants me?"
> No, Shadowfang said. It tests you.
Ethan looked out into the dark forest, where faint shapes moved between the trees — not animals, but silhouettes of light, pulsing in rhythm with the earth itself.
"I don't think I like its tests," he murmured.
> No one ever does.
---
By dawn, they reached the edge of the valley. Below them sprawled a landscape unlike anything Ethan had ever seen — an ocean of mist, dotted with islands of stone and light that floated as if defying gravity. Vast, luminous beasts glided beneath the fog, their forms too immense to comprehend.
Lyra stepped beside him, breath catching. "By the gods…"
Ethan said nothing. His heartbeat thundered in his ears.
Somewhere down there, in the heart of that impossible expanse, lay the truth the Guild had buried. The beginning of everything — and perhaps, the end.
Shadowfang's flames rose, casting their light across the mist.
> Welcome to the Heart of the Wild.
Ethan's grip tightened on his blade. His fear didn't fade — it burned with the same fire as resolve.
"Then let's find out," he whispered, "what freedom really means."
And together, they descended into the mist.
---