Darian found Seruvan waiting at the village gate, just as promised.
The old man stood with his back against the ancient stones, his weathered face turned toward the grey horizon where the trade road wound down from the mountains like a pale scar across the land. He did not acknowledge Darian's approach, though surely his beast-senses had detected the boy long before he came into view.
"You said your goodbyes?"
"Yes, Master."
They had been brief, those farewells. His mother had pressed a small leather pouch into his hands—coins she had been saving for years, hidden from his father in a hollow beneath the cooking stones. His sister had cried. His father had gripped his shoulder once, hard enough to bruise, and said nothing at all.
That silence had spoken louder than any words.
"Good." Seruvan pushed off from the wall, his joints creaking audibly. "Walk with me. The caravan won't arrive for another hour, and there are things you must understand before you leave this place."
They walked together along the village wall, their footsteps crunching on gravel. The morning had warmed slightly, though the ash-grey sky remained unchanged—it was always unchanged, had been unchanged for three thousand years according to the old stories. Darian had never known any other sky and could not imagine one.
"Tell me," Seruvan said, "what do you know of the world beyond Varketh?"
Darian considered the question carefully. "I know there are three great empires and nine kingdoms between them. I know our empire—the Shahrivar Sovereignty—is ruled by the Shah-Alpha and his beast clans. I know Mithrakesh is the holy city where the First Beasts are worshipped and where those of the Beast Path train."
"Facts. Names. The skeleton of knowledge without its flesh." Seruvan's voice carried an edge of disappointment. "What do you know of how power works, boy? Of what it means to be awakened in a world where awakening is everything?"
Darian had no answer.
"I thought not." The old man stopped walking, turning to face him directly. The morning light caught the faded tattoos on his neck, making them seem almost alive for a moment. "Listen carefully, because I will say this only once. The world you are entering is nothing like the world you know. In Varketh, you are Khorvan's son—a goatherd's boy who happened to awaken. Your tattoo makes you special here, worthy of respect. But in Mithrakesh, in the great cities of the empire, a single tattoo makes you nothing."
The word landed like a physical blow. Darian opened his mouth to protest, but Seruvan silenced him with a raised hand.
"I do not say this to wound your pride. I say it because understanding this truth may save your life." He resumed walking, slower now, and Darian fell into step beside him. "Power rules in the world beyond these mountains. Not justice, not honor, not the virtues we teach our children—power, pure and simple. Those who have it use it. Those who lack it serve or die. This is the first law of the awakened, and you must carve it into your heart."
"But surely there are laws, traditions—"
"Laws exist to protect the powerful from each other. Traditions serve those who benefit from them." Seruvan's laugh was bitter as ash. "You think the great clans care for fairness? The Shahpur Dynasty, with their manticore blood running back a hundred generations? The Serketh serpents who rule half the merchant roads? They did not rise to power through kindness, boy. They rose through strength and cunning and the ruthless elimination of anyone who threatened them."
Darian thought of his own family—the thin blood, the three generations without an awakening. "And those without power? Those with weak bloodlines?"
"They serve. They bow. They learn to be useful or they are discarded." Seruvan's eye found his, hard and unblinking. "Your bloodline is weak, Darian. The wolf runs thin in your veins. You may reach the second tattoo with effort. The third, with great sacrifice and perhaps a decade of work. But the fourth? The fifth? Those heights are reserved for those whose ancestors have concentrated power across centuries. Noble lines marry noble lines, and with each generation, the blood grows stronger. Meanwhile, common folk like us…"
He trailed off, and Darian could hear the old pain in his silence.
"You reached the second tattoo," Darian said quietly. "With a weak bloodline."
"And it cost me everything." Seruvan's remaining hand went to the stump of his left arm, touching it unconsciously. "I was hungry once, like you. I wanted to rise, to prove that blood was not destiny. I fought and bled and sacrificed things I should never have sacrificed. And in the end, the great clans looked at me the same way they look at any common-blooded practitioner who rises too high."
"How do they look?"
"As a threat to be eliminated." The old man's voice had gone cold. "I was lucky. Others were not. Remember this, boy—the powerful do not want competition. They speak of honor and tradition and the sacred bonds of the Beast Path, but what they truly want is to remain on top. And they will crush anyone who threatens their position."
They had reached the edge of the village now, where the trade road began its winding descent toward the lowlands. In the distance, Darian could see a smudge of movement—the caravan, perhaps, still an hour or more away.
"Then what should I do?" he asked. "If power rules and my blood is weak, how can I succeed?"
Seruvan was quiet for a long moment. When he spoke again, his voice had softened slightly.
"Walk the tight path. That is what we call it—we common folk who must navigate between the great powers. Do not draw attention to yourself. Do not challenge those above your station. Learn everything you can, build alliances with others like yourself, and wait." He placed his hand on Darian's shoulder, the grip surprisingly strong. "The world is changing, boy. I feel it in my bones. The old order grows brittle, and brittle things eventually break. When that day comes, those who have prepared—who have gathered strength in secret while the mighty grew complacent—they will have their chance."
"You speak of rebellion."
"I speak of survival." Seruvan removed his hand, stepping back. "The caravan approaches. Remember what I have told you. Trust no one fully, especially not those who offer friendship freely. In the world you are entering, everything has a price."
Darian bowed, the formal gesture feeling strange between them after four years of casual instruction. "Thank you, Master. For everything."
"Do not thank me yet." The old man's lips curved into something that was almost a smile. "Thank me when you return with your third tattoo and enough coin to buy your father new goats. Until then, you owe me nothing but the effort to survive."
—————
The caravan arrived as the sun reached its zenith—or rather, as the pale disc behind the ash-clouds reached the highest point in its arc. It was smaller than Darian had imagined: eight covered wagons pulled by sturdy grey oxen, accompanied by perhaps thirty people on foot and horseback. But to eyes that had never seen more than twenty souls gathered in one place, it seemed like an army.
The caravan master was exactly as Seruvan had described. Zerveth of the Serpent Line was a woman of perhaps forty winters, lean and sharp-featured, with scales patterning the skin of her forearms and eyes that held vertical pupils like a viper's. Three tattoos marked her neck—a coiled serpent, a fang dripping venom, and something that looked like a stylized eye.
She regarded Darian with those unsettling eyes for a long moment, then grunted.
"Wolf blood. Thin, but present. You're Seruvan's student?"
"Yes, Caravan Master."
"Then you know how to work. Good. We leave within the hour. Trading first, then the road." She turned away, already moving toward the village elder's house. "Find yourself a place in the third wagon. Touch nothing that isn't yours. Cause trouble and I'll leave you for the ash-storms."
The trading was swift and businesslike. The villagers exchanged dried meat, wool, and a small quantity of the grey salt that could only be found in these mountains for tools, cloth, and medicines that could not be produced locally. Darian watched it all from his assigned wagon, memorizing the rhythms of commerce that he had never witnessed before.
When the caravan finally lurched into motion, he did not look back at Varketh.
He was a man now. A tattooed one. Looking back was for children.
—————
The journey to Mithrakesh would take ten days, and each one brought new wonders.
On the first day, Darian learned the names of his fellow travelers. Most were common folk—merchants, craftsmen, pilgrims seeking the holy city—but among them walked those who had awakened. A knife-thin man named Corvax bore a single beast tattoo, hawk blood by the sharpness of his features and the way his head moved in quick, birdlike jerks. A woman called Thessaly carried the serpent mark like Zerveth, though only at the first level. Two brothers from a distant village bore wolf tattoos similar to his own.
But the true revelations came on the third day, when Darian first saw the other Paths.
The caravan had stopped at a waystation—a fortified inn at a crossroads where several trade routes converged—and as they watered the oxen, a group of warriors emerged from the station's gates. Darian's nose caught their scent before his eyes found them: metal and oil and something else, something that made his wolf-blood stir uneasily.
"Ka-Forgers," Corvax said, noticing his stare. "Blade-dancers from the Second Empire. Don't gawk—they find it insulting."
But Darian could not help himself.
There were six of them, all men, wearing leather and light chain that left their arms bare. And in those hands—or rather, extending from those hands as if they had grown there—were weapons unlike anything he had ever seen.
The leader carried a sword, but no ordinary blade. It was too large for a normal man to wield, gleaming with an inner light, and along its edge ran three parallel stripes of pure gold that seemed to pulse with heartbeat rhythm. The metal itself appeared almost alive, and when the man shifted his grip, the sword responded, reshaping slightly to better fit his palm.
"Three stripes," Corvax murmured. "Forged rank, probably a minor noble's son. The bow-dancer behind him is only second stripe, but that's still enough to put an arrow through a man's eye at three hundred paces."
Darian tore his gaze from the leader to find the archer—a younger man, perhaps only a few years older than himself, carrying a bow of gleaming silver wood. Two stripes ran along its curved length, and as he watched, the archer drew an arrow from empty air, the shaft manifesting from light and will.
"How?" Darian breathed. "How is that possible?"
"Their path." Corvax shrugged with the indifference of familiarity. "They call it Ka-Forging—the Way of the Heart-Forge, if you want the formal name. They train their hearts to manifest their inner essence as tools. Weapons, usually, though I've heard of stranger things. Shields, chains, hammers that can reshape stone."
"But our path—"
"Different roots, same tree." The hawk-blooded man scratched at the feathers beginning to show along his jawline—a sign of his beast blood asserting itself. "There are four great Paths, boy. Surely you knew this? Beast-Blood, Ka-Forging, the Seraph-Crowned, and…" He trailed off, making a warding gesture.
"And?"
"The fourth is not spoken of." Corvax's voice had gone flat. "Not by those who value their lives. Come—the oxen are watered. We should return to the wagons."
But the mysteries were not done with Darian that day.
As the caravan prepared to leave the waystation, a final figure emerged from its gates—and this one stopped Darian's heart entirely.
He was a priest. That much was obvious from his white robes and the golden sun emblazoned on his chest. But behind him, floating like a figure from a fever dream, was something that should not have existed. A shape of light and geometry, vaguely humanoid, with two folded wings and a face that was somehow present yet impossible to look upon directly.
And on its head—a crown bearing two gemstones that burned like captured stars.
"Seraph-Crowned," Corvax whispered, and there was fear in his voice. "Second gem. Don't meet his eyes, don't speak to him, don't even breathe too loudly. The Church's priests are not known for their tolerance of beast-blooded."
The priest walked past them without a glance, his Seraph drifting behind him like a faithful shadow. But as he passed, Darian felt something—a pressure against his mind, as if unseen eyes were weighing and measuring him. His wolf-blood snarled in response, hackles rising at the intrusion.
Then the moment passed, and the priest was gone, climbing into a wagon reserved for passengers of means.
"Three Paths," Darian said quietly. "And a fourth that cannot be named."
"Now you begin to understand." Corvax moved toward their wagon, gesturing for Darian to follow. "The world is larger than your village, wolf-pup. And far more dangerous. Come—we have many miles yet to travel."
—————
The days blurred together after that.
They traveled through landscapes that shifted from grey mountain to grey plain to grey forest, the ash-sky unchanging overhead. At night, they made camp in makeshift tents, huddling around fires while guards walked the perimeter. Darian learned to set snares for the grey rabbits that lived in the roadside scrub. He learned which plants could be eaten and which would kill. He learned the rhythm of caravan life—the endless walking, the tedium broken by moments of beauty or terror.
On the seventh day, they passed a battlefield where two noble houses had clashed a season ago. The bones had been picked clean, but the scars on the earth remained—great gouges where Ka-Forged weapons had struck, burned circles where Seraphic fire had fallen, claw marks the size of wagon wheels where transformed beast-warriors had fought and died.
On the ninth day, they crossed into the territory of the Serpent Clans, and Zerveth's posture relaxed for the first time since they had left the mountains.
On the tenth day, Darian saw Mithrakesh.
—————
The holy city rose from the grey plain like a vision from another age.
Walls of white stone, impossibly high, surrounded a sprawl of buildings that seemed to stretch to the horizon. Towers and domes and spires reached toward the ash-sky as if trying to pierce it, and even from a distance, Darian could see the great temples that crowned the city's seven hills—each one dedicated to one of the First Beasts, the legendary ancestors of all beast-blood.
The Temple of the Wolf. The Temple of the Serpent. The Temple of the Lion, the Eagle, the Bear, the Shark, and the Raven. Seven beasts, seven temples, seven centers of power that had shaped the Shahrivar Sovereignty for three thousand years.
"Beautiful, isn't it?" Thessaly had appeared beside him, her serpent eyes reflecting the distant city. "I've made this journey six times, and it still takes my breath away."
"It's…" Darian had no words. His village could have fit inside those walls a hundred times over. A thousand times. His entire world had just become very, very small.
The inspection took three hours.
Guards met them at the outer gate—warriors of the third level, their tattoos prominently displayed, their beast-forms barely restrained beneath their skin. They checked papers, examined goods, questioned travelers about their purpose and destination. The Ka-Forgers were waved through with respect. The Seraph-Crowned priest passed without inspection at all, his status placing him above such mundane concerns.
But the beast-blooded were checked thoroughly.
"Wolf line, first tattoo, village of Varketh," the guard recited, examining the papers Seruvan had prepared. His own tattoos marked him as bear-blooded—three of them, the third depicting a roaring maw. "Purpose of visit?"
"Training. The Temple of the First Fang, if they'll have me."
The guard's eyes flickered with something—amusement, perhaps, or contempt. "Thin blood. Common stock. You'll be lucky to scrub their floors." He stamped the papers with a seal and thrust them back. "Move along. Don't cause trouble."
Darian bit back the anger that surged in his chest. Walk the tight path, Seruvan had said. Do not challenge those above your station.
He moved along.
—————
The bazaars of Mithrakesh were madness given form.
Darian wandered through streets that twisted and turned without logic, past stalls selling goods he could not name and could barely comprehend. There were tools here—Ka-Forged implements that hummed with inner light, blades that seemed to whisper secrets, hammers that could reshape metal with a thought. There were cloths dyed in colors he had never imagined: blues deeper than the legends of the pre-Sundering sky, reds like fresh arterial blood, golds that seemed to glow with captured sunlight.
There were foods that smelled of spices his nose could not identify. There were jewels and weapons and books and artifacts from all three empires, traded and bartered and sold in a cacophony of voices speaking a dozen different dialects.
It was overwhelming. It was terrifying. It was the most beautiful thing he had ever experienced.
He was so lost in wonder that he almost missed the threat.
Two children—a boy and a girl, neither older than ten—had been following him for the past three streets. His new senses had registered them subconsciously, but his conscious mind had been too dazzled by the spectacle around him to pay attention. Now, as they drew closer, he caught their scent clearly: hunger, desperation, and the particular sharpness of ill intent.
The boy's hand was reaching for the leather pouch at Darian's belt—the pouch containing his mother's coins, his only money in this vast and uncaring city.
Darian's hand shot out, grabbing the boy's wrist before the small fingers could close on their target.
"Don't."
The boy's eyes went wide. The girl, his partner, was already melting back into the crowd.
"Please, sir." The boy's voice was practiced, pathetic. "I wasn't doing nothing, I swear—"
"You were robbing me." Darian kept his grip firm but not painful. "If you had succeeded, I would have nothing. No money, no food, no way to survive in this city. Did you think about that?"
The boy's mask slipped, and for a moment, Darian saw the truth beneath—the hollow cheeks, the haunted eyes, the desperation of a child who had learned too young that the world was cruel and survival had a price.
Those without power serve or die.
Darian released the boy's wrist. Reached into his pouch and withdrew a single copper coin—more than he could afford to lose, less than the boy needed.
"Take this. And don't try to rob me again."
The boy stared at the coin, then at Darian, his expression unreadable. Then he snatched the copper and vanished into the crowd, gone so quickly he might have been a ghost.
Darian clutched his remaining coins tightly and walked on, more aware now of the dangers that lurked beneath the beauty.
—————
He found the Hall of the Serpent as the grey light was beginning to fade.
It was not a grand building—nothing like the temples that crowned the hills—but it was solid and well-maintained, with the coiled serpent of Clan Serketh carved above its doors. A sign proclaimed it a sanctuary for young practitioners seeking training, operated by the Church of the First Beasts as a charitable service.
Inside, a bored-looking acolyte took his name and assigned him a bed in a long dormitory hall. Perhaps fifty young people slept here, most of them his age or younger, all bearing the single tattoo of the newly awakened.
Darian found his assigned bed—a simple pallet near the hall's eastern end—and set down his meager possessions. Exhaustion was beginning to claim him, the accumulated fatigue of ten days' travel settling into his bones.
"First time in the city?"
He turned to find two young people watching him from neighboring beds. The speaker was a girl about his age, with sharp features and the subtle scaling of serpent blood visible along her neck. Beside her sat a boy, broader and heavier, whose tattoo depicted a bear's paw.
"That obvious?"
"You have the look." The girl smiled, and it was not entirely unfriendly. "I'm Nefara. Serpent line, village of Keth-Serak, three weeks ahead of you on the path. This is Korvan—bear line, here for the same reason as us."
"Darian. Wolf line." He hesitated, then added: "Village of Varketh, in the grey mountains."
"Mountains." Korvan's voice was a low rumble, fitting for his bulk. "Long journey. You must want this badly."
"I want to be more than what my blood says I should be."
Nefara and Korvan exchanged a glance—something passing between them that Darian couldn't read.
"Then you've come to the right place," Nefara said finally. "Or the wrong one. The Serpent School doesn't care about your bloodline—only about what you can become. That means everyone gets the same chance." Her smile sharpened. "It also means everyone suffers the same trials. Rest now, wolf-boy. Tomorrow, your real training begins."
Darian lay back on his pallet, staring at the ceiling as the sounds of the hall settled around him. Somewhere in the distance, a temple bell was ringing—deep and resonant, calling the faithful to evening prayers.
He was alone in a city of strangers, with thin blood and no allies and nothing but his own will to carry him forward. The tight path stretched before him, narrow and treacherous.
But as sleep claimed him, it was not fear that filled his heart.
It was hunger.