"The forest is not endless. It circles. Those who run too long only meet themselves coming back."
— Inscription found on the ruined stones of the Old Shrine.
The night was long and sharp.
Lin Wuji ran until the world bled into darkness. Branches clawed at his skin; roots tore at his feet. His wound pulsed like molten iron under the flesh, silver's poison weaving slow fire through his veins. Behind him, faint but certain, came the sound of pursuit—measured, relentless.
The Silver Order never stopped once it had the scent.
He leapt a fallen tree and landed hard on the other side, knees sinking into the cold mud. The forest ahead grew denser, the air changing—he could smell stone and moss and something older, a metallic tang that didn't belong to the living. The trees leaned inward, forming a tunnel of shadows. He didn't know this path, yet his body followed it as if guided by instinct.
The chase had carried him far beyond the pack's borders. Even the wind here moved differently.
At first, the only sound was his heartbeat. Then, from behind—distant but clear—the faint twang of a crossbow. The bolt whistled past, biting bark.
"Go!" a voice shouted. "He's wounded! Drive him east!"
Wuji's pulse quickened. There were at least three of them. He could tell from the spread of their steps, from the rhythm of breath carried on the wind.
He ducked low and veered into a ravine where mist rolled thick as breath. His blood marked the trail, but the rain had started—light, steady, washing the scent thin. He pressed his hand to the wound. It hissed, skin blistering around the edges, but the bleeding had slowed.
He needed distance. He needed ground that didn't remember footsteps.
The ravine widened into a hollow glade. At its center stood a stone arch, half-buried under vines. It wasn't natural. Carvings ran along its face—spirals and crescent marks that shimmered faintly in the rain. Wuji slowed, breathing hard.
The arch pulsed faintly under the moonlight. Beneath it, the ground dipped inward, revealing stairs carved into rock.
Something in his chest pulled him forward.
The steps led to a chamber hidden beneath the earth—wide, circular, lined with weathered wolf statues. Moonlight filtered through cracks above, painting the floor in thin white ribbons. In the center stood a shrine made of bone and obsidian. A silver bowl rested atop it, filled with what looked like water but smelled faintly of blood and ash.
Wuji knelt, drawn without thought. His reflection shimmered in the liquid—half human, half something else, eyes faintly gold.
He reached toward it.
"Do not touch that."
The voice came from the dark. Wuji froze. From behind one of the pillars stepped a woman cloaked in grey, her face hidden beneath a hood lined with silver thread. The scent that rolled off her was neither wolf nor human, but something between—muted, balanced, cold.
"Who are you?" Wuji asked, hand hovering over the bowl.
"Someone who remembers when this place was alive," she said quietly. "And when it died."
She stepped closer. The torchlight from her lantern revealed faint scars across her forearms—bite marks, old and deliberate.
Wuji rose slowly. "You're not Silver Order."
"No." She studied him. "But you carry their blood… and something far older."
He took a step back. "How do you know?"
"Because this shrine only opens for those born of both. You've crossed into the land of memory, child. The wolves called it Eirath, the Place That Howls Without Sound."
Wuji looked around. "What was it for?"
"An oath," she said. "Long before the Orders, before Fangxin's bloodline. This was where men and wolves first drank together. The first moon-bond was sealed here."
Wuji's throat tightened. "I've seen it," he whispered. "In the Language of Blood."
The woman's eyes sharpened. "Then you've drunk from the basin."
He nodded.
Her voice dropped. "Then the blood knows you now. You cannot run from it."
"I'm not running." He looked toward the stairs. "I'm being hunted."
She smiled faintly. "Then you've already learned the first truth of the curse. It doesn't matter who hunts. You always run—from them, from the moon, from yourself."
The ground above shuddered. A voice echoed faintly down the stairs: "There! The tracks end here!"
Wuji turned toward the sound. "They've found me."
The woman's expression didn't change. "Then decide quickly. If they see this place, they'll defile it as they did before."
"I won't let them."
"You can't fight them all."
"I don't need to." He knelt by the bowl again and stared at his reflection. The gold in his eyes brightened, pulsing with the same rhythm as the shrine. "I just need them to follow the wrong scent."
He reached for the liquid and dipped his fingers into it. It burned cold—worse than silver, sharper than pain. But when he smeared it across his wound, the blood hissed once, then stilled. The scent of silver vanished.
The woman's eyes widened. "You shouldn't have done that."
"I didn't ask permission."
Above them, footsteps neared the entrance. The faint glow of torches painted the stone walls.
The woman stepped closer, voice low and urgent. "Listen to me, Lin Wuji. The shrine remembers every bloodline that touches it. If it accepts you, it will hide you—but at a cost."
"What cost?"
"Your memory. Each time you use its protection, it takes something. A face, a name, a piece of who you were."
Wuji's gaze flicked toward the stairs. The first torchlight appeared. "Then it'll have to take something small."
He pressed his palm to the bowl.
Light burst outward like a soundless scream. The chamber filled with cold wind, spiraling through the statues. Wuji felt it flood his veins—ice and fire, memory unraveling at the edges.
For an instant, he saw Fangxin—standing on the edge of a cliff, watching fire devour a village. His village. The Alpha turned, eyes gold, unflinching. Then the vision shattered.
When the light dimmed, the chamber was empty.
The soldiers reached the bottom of the stairs moments later. "Captain?" one called.
Captain Elira descended behind them, her torch high. She swept the light across the floor. The shrine lay undisturbed. The air smelled faintly of smoke and rain.
"Tracks?" she asked.
"Gone," the scout said. "No scent. No trace."
Elira stepped toward the bowl. The liquid inside was still, mirror-smooth. She leaned close—and saw her own reflection ripple into the faint outline of golden eyes staring back.
She straightened sharply, her hand going to her sword. "He was here."
"Captain?"
She didn't answer. Her gaze moved across the carvings, tracing the spirals and crescents. Something in the pattern drew her in.
"Mark this place," she said finally. "No fire, no disturbance. This isn't a den—it's something else."
"What is it?"
Elira's expression darkened. "A memory. And memories are harder to kill than beasts."
Far from the shrine, Wuji emerged through another tunnel mouth deep in the forest. He stumbled out, coughing, half-blind. The wound no longer burned; his skin bore faint lines of silver that faded with each breath.
He touched his temple, frowning. Something was missing—something small but sharp. A voice, perhaps. A name whispered once in a dream. He tried to remember the sound of his mother's voice and couldn't.
He looked up. The moon watched him, pale and enormous.
The forest whispered around him—leaves rustling, air trembling. In the distance, he thought he heard Fangxin's call, long and low, carrying through the trees.
He didn't answer.
He stood there until the wind shifted and the scent of rain covered the last trace of blood.
Then, quietly, he began to walk again—not toward the pack, not toward the hunters, but deeper into the part of the forest that remembered him better than he remembered himself.