Chapter 3 – Rise of the Wolfbone General
"Do you feel pain?"
Karl opened his eyes. The ceiling spun.
“No.”
"Do you feel... remorse?"
He blinked slowly. “No.”
"Good." The surgeon made a note. "Wolfbone adaptation successful."
The room reeked of sterilized blood and ozone. Tubes slithered from his chest like vines. Somewhere, machines ticked in sync with his artificial pulse.
Karl sat up without permission.
“Where’s my sword?”
“Easy. You’ve been unconscious for six days.”
“Where’s my sword?”
They gave it back. He stood, unsteady, but not weak.
Memory loss was expected, they’d said. A side effect. A cleansing.
No attachments.
No distractions.
Only duty.
---
“You don’t flinch,” Commander Renks observed as Karl dissected a rebel corpse in the courtyard lab.
Karl didn’t look up. “I have no use for flinching.”
Renks snorted. “That serum made you a machine.”
“No, sir.” He slid a bone saw into the cadaver’s ribcage. “It made me useful.”
He was seventeen then. A prodigy of tactics. Fast promotions. No vices. No mercy.
The empire called him the Wolfbone General before he was old enough to drink.
His chest bore a puckered scar—ugly, jagged. The point of entry where his own heart had failed.
He never asked who saved him.
He never wondered why the scar sometimes burned when he smelled smoke.
---
Three years later.
A soldier handed him a sealed intelligence scroll. “New rebel cell, Commander. Near the northern border.”
Karl unrolled it.
Target: codename BLACK-BLOOD. Rogue healer. Specialist in toxin reversal. Suspected leader of multiple supply route ambushes.
Primary trait: **Mute.**
His pulse slowed. “Where did this information come from?”
“Intercepted medical requests. Herb combinations too precise to be coincidence.”
He stared at the list: blackroot, starvine, spider-silk suture. All known Wolfbone antidotes.
The edge of his scar throbbed.
“Capture alive,” Karl ordered.
“Sir?”
“She’s more useful breathing.”
---
The ambush unfolded like a symphony. His soldiers struck at dusk, arrows silenced with waxed feathers. Smoke bombs in alley mouths. Paralyzing gas funneled into hideouts.
Karl stood at the center of it, sword lowered, watching shadows stumble.
Then someone broke through the perimeter.
A girl, hooded, sprinting along the ridge.
Karl gave chase himself.
She was fast. Precise. Too precise for a common rebel.
When they tackled her, she didn’t scream.
Didn’t speak.
Only looked up—and something in his chest faltered.
Not his heart.
Something older.
---
“Bring her to the interrogation hall.”
“She’s not talking, sir.”
“She will.”
He entered the room alone.
Chains clinked as she turned her head.
Moonlight from the grated window sliced across her face. Blood stained her collar. Hands bound. Left shoulder torn just enough to expose a faint scar.
A rose. Pale against skin.
He stopped.
“Take off the hood,” he ordered.
She didn’t flinch as he removed it.
Eyes met.
Hers were quiet. Defiant.
“You’re the one they call Black-Blood,” he said.
Silence.
“You’ve sabotaged five convoys. Healed infected prisoners. Manufactured illegal antidotes.”
Still nothing.
He leaned closer. “Why mute? A trick?”
No response.
He slammed his hand on the table. “Who taught you Wolfbone counter-compounds?”
Nothing.
He walked in circles around her. “Tell me your origin. Your allegiance. Your name.”
She didn’t blink.
Finally, after an hour of nothing, she whispered.
Only once.
“You don’t deserve to know me.”
The words hit like a blow to the sternum.
Karl staggered back before catching himself.
He ended the session, hand tight on the doorframe.
Outside, guards waited. “Interrogation failed?”
“No.” He looked back through the glass. “She’ll talk when she realizes silence won’t protect her.”
“She’s just a healer.”
Karl’s voice turned low. “She’s something else.”
---
That night, Karl sat alone in his quarters, re-reading the transcript.
You don’t deserve to know me.
He pressed two fingers to the scar on his chest.
It burned.