The Gathering Storm
The mountain wind bit cold and sharp, but Aria barely noticed. She stood at the edge of a high cliff overlooking the valley where their new haven would rise. Below, construction had already begun—tents, stone markers, and ceremonial fires lit the ground like stars in the dusk.
She could hear laughter, distant howls, the faint rhythm of hope returning.
But something inside her whispered of storms yet to come.
"Trouble?" Kade asked, stepping beside her.
"Change," she replied.
"That's the same thing to most people."
She glanced sideways at him. "Not to us."
They stood in silence for a moment. The moon rose red-orange in the sky—not blood, not yet, but tinted like an omen. Her mark warmed against her skin.
"Do you feel that?" she asked.
Kade nodded. "The air's wrong."
She reached out with her senses—something Selene had taught her in the crypt. Listening beyond wind and trees.
There.
A tremor. A wrongness. A silence too deep to be natural.
Her breath hitched. "He's not done."
---
The others gathered quickly.
Lyra arrived with two new recruits in tow—young, orphaned twins with crescent scars on their necks. They looked at Aria like she was a myth come alive.
Reid was fresh from a scouting mission, his shirt torn, eyes hard. "Two packs are missing from the east," he reported. "Gone. No signs of struggle. No signs of blood."
"Like they vanished?" Mira asked.
"Or were taken," Reid said.
Kai arrived last, dust clinging to his cloak. "I saw something. Out in the dunes."
Aria turned to him sharply. "What?"
"A figure," Kai said. "Not a rogue. Not a wolf. Just… wrong. Like a mirage that stared back."
He pulled something from his satchel.
A black feather.
It shimmered purple in the firelight. No bird in the realms had feathers like that.
Reid stepped back. "That's shadowcraft."
"No," Mira whispered. "That's worse. That's deep-night magic."
Aria clenched her jaw. "Then we're not just dealing with what Varian left behind. We're dealing with what he woke up."
---
They gathered around the central flame that night—the Six, joined now by a growing number of survivors. Not all were fighters. Some were healers. Others were broken. All were looking to them for something greater.
And so, Aria stood and addressed them.
"We defeated Varian," she began. "But the darkness doesn't end when a tyrant falls. It lingers. It learns. And now it's changing."
She raised the feather for all to see.
"Something new is rising. Something older than Varian. We believe it has already begun to consume entire packs."
Gasps rippled through the crowd.
"We are no longer a scattered people," Aria said. "We are Moonborn—reborn in purpose, reborn in unity. We will not be prey. We will stand, and we will face whatever comes."
She looked around at the faces lit by fire.
"I will lead you," she said. "But not as a queen. Not as a savior. As your sister. As your equal."
She stepped back.
And Kade stepped forward beside her, placing a hand over his heart.
Then Mira.
Then Lyra.
Then Reid.
Then Kai.
The Six, once broken, now whole.
Together.
---
Later, after the crowd had dispersed and the stars rose in a velvet sky, Aria sat alone on a flat stone. Her hand rested on the feather.
It hummed softly in her palm.
"Don't sleep," came a voice.
She looked up—Selene stood there, a vision of memory and moonlight, her form flickering like a ghost in wind.
"You're not really here," Aria whispered.
"No," Selene said gently. "But I'm always near."
Aria's voice broke. "I'm not ready."
Selene smiled. "You were ready the moment you chose to stand."
Aria looked out at the night. "What's coming?"
Selene's form wavered.
And her voice dropped into something almost inhuman.
"The Forgotten One. The Shadow Before Moonlight. The first who was cast out."
Then she vanished.
Leaving behind silence.
And a sky where a new star had appeared—black, pulsing like a heartbeat.
---
Far away… in the ruins beneath the Hollow World…
A clawed hand broke from a coffin sealed in obsidian chains.
A voice echoed in a tongue older than wolves:
"Let the Moon scream."