Ashes and Awakening

A heavy silence swallowed the battlefield.

Lira's fingers clenched tightly around her dagger, the blade trembling slightly. Not from fear—from something worse. Her breathing was shallow, measured, but Aric could see it—her pulse was racing beneath her skin. She had seen many horrors in her life. But never this.

Aric struggled to push himself up, his limbs weak from exhaustion, but his instincts screamed at him to move, to run. He wasn't even sure why—his body just knew.

A presence stood at the edge of the ruined village. It had not charged into the battle. It had not growled, nor howled, nor bared its fangs like the wolves before it.

It was simply watching.

The figure towered above the tallest man, its thin, unnatural limbs barely seeming to touch the ground. The torchlight flickered erratically, as if shrinking away from its presence.

Aric couldn't make out its face—if it even had one.

Its form was shifting, like ink dispersing through water. Not fully solid. Not fully real.

The remaining wolves, the ones still alive after Aric's surge of power, had gone still. They did not retreat. They did not attack. They simply stood in the presence of the figure, silent and waiting.

Lira took a slow step backward. "Aric… what the hell is that?"

Aric's fingers curled against the dirt. "I don't know."

Kael's face was unreadable. His usual amusement was gone, replaced with a quiet, unsettling focus. "It's not from here," he murmured. "That's for damn sure."

The entity shifted.

The air rippled.

The very ground beneath them groaned, as if something massive had shifted beneath the surface.

Then—the whispers came.

Not from its mouth. From everywhere.

A voice that wasn't a voice. Words that weren't words.

Aric's vision blurred. The battlefield around him flickered—for a fraction of a second, he saw something else entirely.

A city of towering black spires, reaching toward a sky choked in storm clouds.

A throne, empty and cracked, drenched in the light of a dying sun.

A battlefield long forgotten, where bodies turned to dust in the wind.

His breath hitched.

It felt real.

Too real.

The vision faded as quickly as it came. Aric gasped, his mind spinning, his pulse hammering against his ribs. He staggered, barely managing to stay upright.

Kael was watching him carefully. "You saw something, didn't you?"

Aric didn't answer.

Because something wasn't right.

The wolves—they weren't moving anymore.

One by one, their bodies collapsed.

No cries of pain. No final snarls. Just silence.

Their golden eyes dulled, as if something had simply… extinguished them.

A bitter taste filled Aric's mouth. He had felt something pass through him, something that wasn't flesh or claw or even magic.

The figure at the edge of the battlefield tilted its head.

Then it stepped backward.

And in an instant—it was gone.

The moment it disappeared, the torches roared back to life. The wind rushed through the clearing once more.

The world hadn't been right while it was here. And now… it had left something behind.

Aric exhaled slowly, his hands trembling at his sides.

No one spoke.

Because no one knew what the hell had just happened.

The Morning After

The sun rose over ruins.

The battle was over, but Eldermere was barely standing. The wooden barricades were broken, torn apart by the wolves' relentless attack. Blood soaked the dirt roads, some fresh, some already turning dark with age. The scent of iron clung to the air, mixing with the acrid bitterness of burnt wood and scorched fur.

The dead were being gathered.

Aric moved through the village slowly, his muscles aching with every step. His body felt drained, weak. As if something inside him had burned too brightly the night before, leaving nothing but embers in its place.

He had barely slept. His dreams had been filled with fragments of memories that didn't belong to him. The city of black spires. The broken throne. The battlefield swallowed by dust.

It had felt more than a dream. It had felt like a reminder.

The villagers stole glances at him as he passed. Some in awe. Some in fear. Some whispered beneath their breath.

Some called him a hero.

Others called him something else entirely.

At the village square, Elder Mara stood near the well, watching the sunrise with tired, sunken eyes. When she turned to him, there was no hostility, no warmth—only quiet understanding.

"You're not just a lost traveler, are you?" she asked.

Aric met her gaze. He didn't answer.

Mara sighed, rubbing her temple. "I have lived through many battles, many wars, but never have I seen something like last night." Her eyes searched his face, but whatever she was looking for, she must not have found it. "That thing… the one that appeared in the end. You recognized it, didn't you?"

Aric hesitated. He thought of the vision—the throne, the city, the storm.

"I don't know what I saw," he admitted. "Not yet."

Mara studied him for a long moment, then finally nodded. "I won't ask more. Not yet."

A shadow moved behind him. Lira approached, her expression unreadable. "You should see this," she murmured.

Aric followed her through the streets, past the broken barricades, past the ruins of what had once been Eldermere's outer defenses.

She stopped at the edge of the battlefield.

The wolves were still there. Their bodies lay untouched, just as they had collapsed the night before. But something was wrong.

Aric crouched beside one of the carcasses. Its fur was still thick, still dark. But the glow in its golden eyes had faded.

And its body—it was beginning to wither.

Not rot. Wither.

The skin had begun to tighten over bone, the flesh drying as if the creature had aged a hundred years overnight.

Aric frowned. "This… isn't natural."

Kael's voice came from behind him. "No," he said simply. "It isn't."

Aric turned to him. "You recognized that thing last night, didn't you?"

Kael exhaled slowly. "Recognized? No. But I've heard stories." He crouched beside Aric, tapping the brittle, withered skin of the dead wolf. "Places like this—places where the world bends—they don't just break overnight. It happens slowly. Things slip through." His gaze flicked to Aric. "And sometimes, things wake up."

A cold sensation settled in Aric's chest.

Something had woken up.

And it wasn't just the wolves.

He glanced toward the forest's edge. The trees stood silent, unmoving.

But somehow, he knew.

Whatever had stepped through last night—it wasn't gone.

It was just waiting.