"To fight the future, she must remember the dead who never left."
---
Selene followed the silver-cloaked stranger.
Her legs trembled, and her shirt clung to her with dried blood, but she walked anyway—through fog-draped trees, past twitching Ravenscourge corpses, and under a sky that pulsed red with the threat of a second moon.
Behind them, the Devil Alpha watched.
He made no move to stop them.
Because fear had crept into his grin.
The seven cloaked wolves led her deeper into the woods, beyond the border of known territory. The temperature dropped with every step. The shadows thickened.
And then—
They arrived.
A frozen lake stretched before her.
Black as obsidian.
Still as death.
In the middle of it, a stone shrine stood like a broken tooth, its carvings half-erased by time. Chains hung from it—old, rusted, blood-stained.
The cloaked wolves formed a circle around it.
The young stranger stepped forward. His silver cloak billowed as the wind screamed across the ice.
> "This is the Graveheart."
"What is it?" Selene asked.
"Where our ancestors bled for betrayal… and where our enemies forgot to finish the job."
He touched the stone.
And the ice cracked.
---
Flames erupted.
But not from fire.
From memory.
Visions poured out of the cracks:
— A burning village.
— Children screaming.
— Wolves torn apart, tied to silver stakes under the light of the Blood Moon.
— A woman with Selene's eyes, howling as her mate was gutted.
— And a voice…
"The Hollow Moon will rise again… through her."
Selene dropped to her knees, clutching her head. The pain was unbearable—her blood felt like it was boiling.
And still, the stranger watched calmly.
"You needed to see it," he said.
"You needed to remember what they took from us."
---
Selene gasped, shaking.
She looked up at him. "You… you showed me my mother."
He nodded.
"She tried to save the last of the Hollow Moon Pack. She failed. But not before binding the remainder of our bloodline to the ice beneath this lake."
He gestured to the shrine.
"This is your legacy."
Selene looked around.
These weren't just warriors. These cloaked wolves—
They were survivors.
Descendants.
She was one of them.
---
The wind howled through the trees again.
But this time, it carried no rage.
Only purpose.
Selene rose.
"I'll fight," she said. "But not to survive."
The stranger raised an eyebrow. "Then for what?"
She looked at the shrine.
And smiled for the first time in days.
"To avenge the forgotten.