They left the Bleeding Spire on the forty-eighth morning with thirty-two wolves and one ghost riding inside Lucian's skin.
The journey south-west took twenty-three days of forced march through lands still scarred by void-fire and old blood. They followed a pull none of them could name until the land itself began to change: the iron-hard soil softened, the air lost its taste of rust, and the wind carried the scent of pine and snow instead of death. On the twenty-third night they crested a ridge and saw it.
Omicron Wolf Village.
It was not a village. It was a fortress hidden inside a living mountain. The peaks around it formed a perfect circle of white fangs, and at the centre a single colossal tree grew upside-down, roots clawing at the sky, branches buried in the earth, silver leaves glowing with their own cold light. Waterfalls fell upward from the valley floor into clouds that never moved. Every wolf in the party felt the same thing at the same moment: the four-rune mark on Xavier's chest cooled for the first time since the Final Shroud, as though the mountain itself was breathing on the cage and keeping the god asleep.
An old wolf waited at the gate (taller than Lucian, fur snow-white streaked with black, eyes the colour of winter moonlight). He wore no armour, only a simple cloak of silver wolf pelts, but every wolf in the party dropped to one knee without thinking. Even Xavier bowed his head.
The old wolf spoke with a voice that sounded like avalanches remembering they could be gentle.
"I am Elder Kael'vhan, last of the First Circle and keeper of Omicron.
You have carried the war far enough.
Come. There is still work to do."
They entered.
The village inside the mountain was vast: caverns big enough to hold cities, rivers of liquid starlight, training grounds carved from obsidian and bone. Thousands of wolves moved with quiet purpose (omegas who could shatter stone with a whisper, alphas whose footsteps did not touch the ground). They looked at the Eclipse Pack with respect, not awe. These were wolves who had never bowed to the unbound god, because they had been preparing for something older.
Kael'vhan took them straight to the heart of the inverted tree.
At its roots hung a single drop of golden liquid the size of a heart, suspended in silver chains.
The Elixir of Life.
Lucian stopped breathing.
Kael'vhan placed one massive hand on Lucian's shoulder.
"Your mate burned to keep the cage strong.
The cage is strong enough now.
It is time to bring him home."
They laid Lucian on a slab of black stone beneath the drop. Zamiel's violet fire rose out of Lucian's chest like smoke, coalescing into the shape of the omega they had lost. The Elixir fell (slow, perfect, inevitable) and struck the fire.
Light.
Silence.
Then a heartbeat.
Zamiel opened his eyes (real eyes, violet and alive) and drew his first breath in a body of flesh and bone again. He looked at Lucian, smiled the same crooked smile from before the rite, and whispered, "Took you long enough, alpha."
Lucian crushed him close hard enough to bruise new ribs, and for the first time in months the entire pack heard real laughter.
That night Kael'vhan gathered the core four in the Hall of Roots.
He told them what no history book had ever recorded.
Beyond the unbound god, beyond the Harbingers, beyond even the First Enigma, there existed the Twelve Supreme Demon Wolf Council (ancient beings who had walked the world when it was still fire and song). They had created the unbound god as a weapon, then shattered and imprisoned it when it grew too strong. For millennia they had slept, believing the threat ended.
They were wrong.
The sealing of the god inside Xavier had sent out a pulse that crossed dimensions. The Twelve had woken. And they were coming (not to save the world, but to finish what they started): to kill the vessel and everything he loved so the weapon could never be used again.
Kael'vhan looked at Xavier, at Lyra, at Lucian holding Zamiel's newly restored hand.
"You have five years," he said. "Five years before.