The crypt beneath the Council's stronghold wasn't built for the living.
The walls wept moisture from centuries of silence, and the scent—old blood, forgotten rites, rotting time—sank into bone and soul alike. Torches flickered low in their sconces, though no one lit them. No one dared.
Bones lined the corridor like jagged teeth. Femurs, ribs, shattered mandibles all stacked with manic precision. Some were splintered with force; others carved—etched in runes so archaic even the gods turned their eyes away. Yet in the stillness of the deep crypt, one remembered.
The elder knelt in the inner chamber, where dust clung to the sacred circle like it feared the light. Once a judge of kings, a wraith fed on prophecy and silence, the elder's hands trembled as they traced the runes scorched into stone.
"She has summoned what she does not understand," the elder murmured, voice cracking like parchment. "And now... the throne beneath the bones begins to stir."
Lyra awoke with a weight in her chest that had no name.
Not pain.
Not grief.
Not even fear.
It was something older. Hungrier.
Cain was gone from the fire circle, his scent already fading. So were the others—off training, fortifying borders, rebuilding what they could from the ash heap of war. They'd all made choices. Sworn oaths. Fought for survival.
But Lyra wasn't sure what she was anymore. Not just a wolf. Not just a mate.
Something had awakened inside her when the blood-magic binding shattered weeks ago. Something had remembered.
She rose without dressing for battle. No armor. No blade. Just a simple tunic, her cloak of ash, and the dagger her mother had buried beside her father—the last relic of a line erased from every record.
The pull inside her grew stronger with every step.
Past the ridgeline.
Through the frozen caves where even echoes froze mid-scream.
Beneath the hollow trees with bark black as death, branches bowed like they whispered secrets too dangerous to say aloud.
She walked until the ground dipped beneath her feet—until roots gave way to stone. She descended into shadow without looking back.
Into the place none dared name aloud.
The old den of the First Alpha.
Where wolves were not crowned—they were offered.
The cavern swallowed sound as soon as she entered.
She took a breath and immediately tasted ash, old iron, and ancient grief. Every instinct screamed to retreat, to shift, to tear her way back to the surface—but the invitation pulsed deeper.
She pressed forward.
The walls curved around her, etched with handprints scorched into stone. Not painted. Not carved. Burned. The imprints of those who had touched the sacred place with fire in their blood and pain in their lineage.
Defiant wolves.
Exiled heirs.
Silenced mates.
At the center of the cavern stood a throne of bone.
Massive. Monstrous. Silent.
Antlers branched from its back like a crown of thorns. Vertebrae stacked to form arms twisted with spines and jawbones. The seat was layered with fragments of old wolves who had once dared to want.
No dust.
No decay.
As if it had never been abandoned—merely waiting.
Waiting for her.
Cain found her hours later.
His boots echoed against stone, his breathing shallow. For all his command, all his legend as the Wolf Who Broke the Bond, he looked like a child at the edge of something sacred and wrong.
"You knew this was here," Lyra said, not turning.
Cain's throat bobbed. "I was taught to fear it. My father told me the story when I was a boy. Said the Throne of First Blood was cursed. That those who sought it lost their minds. Their souls."
"And yet, here I am," she murmured, laying her hand gently on the armrest. The throne was warm. Alive.
"It calls to me."
Cain didn't move closer. He didn't dare.
"Because you're what the prophecy feared," he said, voice quiet but edged in awe. "The one who wears no mark. Who carries the bond of a thousand erased names. The wolves who were never meant to exist."
She turned at last, eyes glowing faintly in the dark. "Then this throne belongs to all of them."
They gathered by moonrise.
Not by message.
Not by order.
By pull.
Wolves no pack claimed.
Mates whose bonds had been torn or never formed at all.
War-born, half-blood, silenced.
They came from the forests. From the tundra. From the borders. Some walked, some crawled, some shifted half into wolf form because their skin had never felt safe in either shape.
And they came not to bow.
But to see what rose in Lyra's eyes.
Not vengeance.
Reckoning.
She stood before them in silence, her ash cloak fluttering with every breath. No crown. No armor. Her hands were bare, and her blade was sheathed.
"I claim nothing," she said, voice carrying across the stone, "but the right to rise."
Then she knelt.
Not to the throne.
To them.
And the ground trembled—not with fury.
With recognition.
Far above, in the sanctum of the Council keep, Merek stumbled.
His goblet shattered against the stone floor, forgotten as pain split his chest open like a cracking egg. All around him, Elders screamed. Some clutched their heads. Others collapsed as the pulse of old magic rolled over them.
The blood-bound links—those twisted cords of dominance that had controlled wolves for generations—frayed like rotted rope. Dozens of wolves blinked in confusion as foreign thoughts poured into their minds. Freedom. Doubt. Will.
"The First Throne…" Merek gasped, collapsing to his knees. "It awakens…"
"It cannot," Elder Sylven snarled. "It's forbidden. Locked away by pact and blood and—"
"She didn't steal the throne," Cain's voice cut through the Council chamber like a blade, his image projected by the ancient scrying pool. "She remembered it."
And the pool shattered.
In Icefall, Lyra rose.
The wolves stood around her—not kneeling. Not bowing.
But taller.
Straighter.
Their breath synced not with an Alpha's command, but with their own pulse. Their own mind. Their own choice.
The throne pulsed once behind her, the bones glowing faintly—not with dominance, but recognition.
She stepped forward, lifting her chin.
"This is not a coronation," she said. "This is not a rebellion."
Her voice echoed through the stone, through the wolves, through the ancient places where even gods had once knelt.
"This is a remembrance."
In the deep woods, where gods once walked before they grew ashamed of their children, something stirred.
The creature uncoiled from beneath the frost-stone.
Older than Alpha.
Older than bond.
Older even than death.
It lifted its head and sniffed the wind. It smelled ash. Bone. Blood—and truth.
It howled.
Not in greeting.
In warning.
"She has remembered what should have stayed buried."
Then it opened its eyes—silver, ancient, and wrathful.
And across the land, from the sea cliffs of Vire to the shattered valleys of Dreynor, wolves felt their blood begin to boil.
"Let the trials begin."