Forbidden Texts and the Shepherd

The mountain pass reeked of frozen blood and diesel. Max's boots skidded on black ice as Selena's armored trucks circled below, their searchlights carving the blizzard into jagged fragments. He clutched The Eternal Wolf beneath his coat, its spine digging into the bullet scar over his ribs—the one Ayla had stitched up with piano wire years ago.

"Should've taken up gardening," he muttered, pressing against a boulder veined with glowing moss. The book pulsed against his chest like a second heartbeat.

(Ten miles north, Lila dipped her quill in midnight-blue ink. The first diary entry spread like frost across parchment: "Sister's lullabies crack my teeth. When I hum them backward, the walls whisper.")

II. Blood and Ballistics

The sniper round grazed Max's thigh before he heard the shot. He rolled behind a rusted shrine, ice slicing his palms. The book fell open to page 117—Ayla's blood sketch of Lucas fluttered out. Not the brooding inspector, but the boy who'd taught her to sharpen knives at thirteen, his laughter caught mid-crescendo.

"Sentimental idiots," Max growled, smearing his own blood across the sketch. The paper absorbed it hungrily, revealing hidden coordinates in ultraviolet ink. Somewhere in the valley, a wolf howled in perfect C minor.

(Lila's quill snapped. Ink pooled into Selena's childhood portrait—the eyes hollow, the mouth stitched with symbols from the fake vampire tongue. Her bruised wrist throbbed in time with Lucas' distant howls.)

III. Shepherd's Gambit

They cornered him at the cliff's edge. Five hunters in wolf-pelt cloaks, breath condensing into snarling mist. Max tore a page from The Eternal Wolf and pressed it to his bleeding leg. The text rearranged into Ayla's handwriting:

"When lost, follow the scars."

He leapt.

The fall tore the coat from his back. Frozen pines rushed upward as wind peeled away the book's false cover, exposing Lila's nursery rhymes etched in Selena's looping script. Ayla's sketch caught on an ice spire, its edges burning with the same blue fire as Lucas' wolf eyes.

(Flashback: A 15-year-old Lucas binding Max's fractured arm after Selena's hounds attacked. "Don't thank me," he'd said, avoiding Ayla's gaze. "She'd never forgive me if her favorite stray died.")

IV. Ink and Ice

The cave stank of rotting pelts. Max lit a flare with trembling hands, its red glow illuminating walls covered in Selena's childhood doodles—wolves with clockwork hearts, vampires with soldering irons. The diary page from The Eternal Wolf trembled as he deciphered Lila's marginalia:

"Our cage had three walls. Sister says the fourth is our skin."

Outside, the hunters' boots crunched closer. Max pressed Ayla's sketch to the cave wall. Blood seeped into the stone, activating a hologram of two girls in a glass cell—Selena teaching 6-year-old Lila to recite metallic tasting words labeled Ancient Vampiric.

"Damn puppeteer," Max spat, pocketing a shard of glowing crystal from the projection. The book's remaining pages began to smolder.

V. The Cost of Memory

Dawn found him at the river's edge, hypothermia gnawing his bones. He floated the charred book across the current, watching Ayla's sketches dissolve into the water. Only Lucas' portrait survived, the boyish grin now warped by river minerals into something feral.

Selena's voice crackled from a hunter's abandoned radio: "Bring me the shepherd's tongue. I want to hear how my sister's lies taste in mortal flesh."

Max bit through his glove, spitting blood onto the last intact page. The droplets formed a map to the observatory from Lucas' childhood nightmares. Somewhere downstream, Lila's newest diary entry glowed beneath hospital sheets:

"Sister doesn't know I kept the key. It's under my tongue, rusting with every lie."

-

Snowflakes hissed as they hit the rifle barrels. Max crouched behind the granite altar, The Eternal Wolf digging into his sternum like a lover's betrayal. He didn't need to open it to see Ayla's damned sketch—Lucas' boyhood smile haunted his peripheral vision, sharper than Selena's sniper scopes.

"Come out, librarian," a hunter sneered, kicking over a memorial plaque. "We'll bind the book with your tendons."

The bullet tore through his calf before he registered the shot. Max collapsed against a cairn, his blood melting the ice to reveal carved names: former shepherds who'd dared transport forbidden texts. He ripped page 117 free, Ayla's sketch fluttering into the storm like a wounded bird.

(In her antiseptic prison, Lila pressed the quill tip to her tongue. The ink tasted of Selena's childhood perfume—honeysuckle and hydrochloric acid. Her newest entry swirled: "Sister's lullabies itch beneath my scalp. When scratched, they bleed his name.")

The hunters' laughter died as Max leapt into darkness. Falling, he remembered Lucas at seventeen, teaching Ayla to track deer through these same mountains. "Focus on the scars," the young inspector had said, guiding her palm over claw-marked birch. "Violence leaves the truest maps."

Ice tore at his face. The book's cover split against an outcrop, regurgitating Lila's nursery rhymes in Selena's manic script. Ayla's sketch caught the wind, its edges fraying into a wolf's silhouette against the blizzard.

When dawn bleached the sky, Max limped from the river with three cracked ribs and a crystal shard glowing in his fist. Behind him, the water devoured the last page—Selena's handwritten "Once upon a time" dissolving into nothingness.

Somewhere, a wolf howled the melody to a song Ayla used to hum while cleaning her revolvers. Somewhere, a diary page dried with the words:

"Found Sister's key under my tongue. It fits the moon's keyhole. Turn twice and weep."