Two thousand years ago before the age of vampires and before the werewolves learned rage and first turned.
There were only witches.
They were the only ones who walked openly among humans, the only ones whose magic was understood and if not always trusted. Other things existed then, older things that had existed long before humans, watching from deeper places, but they did not meddle. Humanity was not yet worth their attention.
And the land remembered everything.
It remembered how the blood soaked into the soil even long before the fire ever rose.
For a hundred years, two villages had lived in peace along the great plains and forested ridges, trading, marrying, honoring boundaries set by ancestors whose bones still rested beneath the earth.
To the east lived the People of the Red Clay, led by Chief Awanate, a man who believed land was not owned but borrowed from those yet to come.
To the west lived the People of the Tall Pines, once ruled by Chief Makya, a cautious elder whose word carried the weight of tradition.
Then one day, Makya died.
And his son took his place.
Chief Tayen, young, broad-shouldered with sharp-eyed. Where his father had seen borders, Tayen saw chains. Where others saw balance, he saw weakness.
The land was wide, the people were strong and yet he wanted more.
Messengers crossed the fields beneath banners of peace, carrying Tayen's demand.
"The land beyond the river," they said.
"The hunting grounds. The forests. All of it."
Awanate listened in silence as the words were spoken.
Then he stood.
"Why should we give up what is ours?" he asked calmly.
"Why should we bend to you?"
"Why should we forgo all our ancestors built just for your ambition?"
The messengers returned with those words and Tayen's face hardened.
"Then they will kneel," he said.
"Or they will burn."
What followed, was much was…War.
A bloody war.
The witches among both tribes felt it as the land cryed beneath marching feet, the sky growing heavy with coming death. Some tried to intervene, weaving barriers and charms, begging their chiefs to stand down.
They were all ignored until the spears met shields.
The war dragged on and the witches fell alongside warriors, their spells unfinished, their blood no different from any other once spilled. The earth drank deeply.
By dawn of one day, thousands lay dead.
And in the end both chiefs fell.
Awanate died standing, spear buried in his chest, still facing west.
Tayen died screaming, the fire taking him as a witch's curse collapsed his lungs from the inside out.
And With their deaths, the remaining warriors stopped.
The senseless slaughter ended not from mercy but exhaustion.
That was the cruelest part.
Their enemies lay broken beyond the treeline, their bodies scattered, weapons abandoned, screams finally swallowed by the night. Victory, the elders would later call it.
But victory meant little when the ground was littered with the dead. Homes had burned until their frames collapsed inward, sparks spiraling into the dark like dying stars. The air reeked of smoke, iron and grief.
Mothers knelt beside unmoving forms.
Fathers tore ash through their hair.
Warriors stood in silence, hands shaking, unsure whether to cry or scream at the loss they had endured.
At the center of it all stood a shaman.
His hair was braided with bone and ash, his skin painted in mourning marks that streaked beneath eyes dulled by sorrow. He leaned heavily on his staff with shallower breaths and his heart weighed down by the names he would never again speak.
They had prayed for protection.
They had prayed for strength.
Now, surrounded by bodies, friends, children, elders, witches who had known their power and died wielding it as they prayed for mercy.
The dead were carried to the Great Flame.
A mountain of flesh and blood rose beneath the sky. The fallen witches were laid among the rest.
As the fire was lit, the people wept.
As the flames climbed higher, they prayed harder.
And as the last fire devoured what remained of the bodies and blood, the shaman raised his hands to the sky.
"Guide them," he whispered.
"To the Pure Lands.
Let their spirits walk the bright paths.
Do not let them wander.
Do not let them be lost."
The people joined him, voices trembling as they spoke the old words, the ones meant to ease souls from flesh and into peace.
The flames at the heart of the ruins surged upward and those burning the mountain of flesh and blood twisting unnaturally high, burning deep orange and blue, colors no ordinary fire should possess.
The heat pressed outward like a living thing, forcing the people back.
"What is this?" someone cried.
The shaman stared, fear and awe warring in his eyes.
"I do not know," he said slowly.
"But whatever it is… it does not feel evil."
Then, a howl tore through the night from within the flames.
It did not sound like the cry of an animal they know nor did it feel like the scream of a man.
This was different.
A sound that clawed its way up the spine and settled into the bones.
Infants wailed.
What remained of the warriors dropped to their knees.
Even the shaman staggered, eyes wide with dawning horror as it continued to grow more and more.
And then right before their eyes, the fire did something it should not have.
Without spell and command.
It gathered.
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Throughout the night, the fire reduced bit by bit and the ashes started to lift.
Ash lifted from the ground, spiraling inward slowly, gently drawn toward the heart of the flame. Embers drifted like fireflies, bending their paths as though guided by unseen hands. The flames folded in on themselves, wrapping around something forming at their center, as if the dead were being called back from what remained of them from the bones, blood, ash to everything left from them.
The people watched from a distance, afraid to breathe.
"The fire should have died by now," one whispered.
"It should have eaten itself by now," another said, voice trembling.
No one moved.
The fire had burned through the night.
It did not die when the wind rose.
It did not fade when rain even threatened.
It burned until the sun climbed the sky and still refused to go out.
Only at dawn did it finally collapse in on itself, folding downward, sinking into the earth as if satisfied.
What remained was a field of smoldering ash.
The people approached slowly, fear pressing against their chests.
"Do not touch it," an elder warned.
"Wait."
A young hunter stepped forward despite himself, eyes fixed on the center of the ruin.
"There is… something there," he said.
Another gasped.
"Run. Get the shaman. Now."
Feet pounded against the earth. Voices rose in panicked murmurs. By the time the shaman arrived, leaning heavily on his staff, the ash had begun to shift.
From the ashes came a body.
This unknown thing is a boy.
He lay at the heart of the ruin, small and unmoving, as though placed there with care. His skin was marked by glowing cracks like cooled magma, lines of dim blue-orange light pulsing faintly beneath flesh that should not have survived the fire.
Flames clung to him, licking his form without consuming it.
The shaman froze.
"This is not death," he whispered.
Then the boy inhaled. The flames breathed with him.
After a few minutes of nothing, the boy arched sharply and his first breath became a raw howl.
The sound rolled across the land, echoing through forests and over plains, sinking into stone and soil alike.
Some covered their ears, others pressed their foreheads to the ground.
The shaman dropped to his knees.
"This is no blessing," he whispered, voice breaking.
The flames finally receded, pulling back into the boy's skin until only heat remained. It was thick, oppressive and alive.
The boy fell still once more, unconscious among the ash.
Nature had heard their grief.
And it had responded the only way it ever could.
And long after the village faded into dust, long after their names were lost to time, the story remained.
Of a child born from the burning dead.
Of a howl that carried souls away.
Of a being the land itself had forged when death tipped the scales too far.
They did not give him a name for names gave power. Instead, they called him what he was.
The Hound of the Fire.
The Ash-Born.
The first hellhound.
And they warned their children: When the dead pile up too high, when balance is broken beyond repair, the fire will howl again. And nature will send its hound.
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