Chapter Three: The Sun and the Wolf
Auron woke to silence. Not the peaceful kind, but the hollow silence that comes after screaming, after battle, after the world itself has stopped to remember the dead.
His eyes opened slowly.
The sky above was gray, washed in the color of ash. Snow had fallen again, gentle and clean, erasing all signs of the slaughter.
He lay in the back of a small wooden cart.
The leather canopy was torn, stained in places where blood had soaked through. A faint warmth glowed from a small ember in a brazier near his feet.
It smelled of pine, smoke, and something faintly metallic, old blood drying on his clothes. For a long time, Auron didn't move.
He just stared at the ceiling of the cart, listening to the wind, waiting for the sound of his grandfather's voice: the deep laugh, the gruff command, the world that used to make sense.
It didn't come. Then memory returned: the crater, Malvio's knife, the spectral wolf. He sat up sharply, gasping.
The movement sent pain stabbing through his chest. His muscles felt wrong, too heavy, too aware. His veins pulsed faintly with light under his skin, as if his body remembered something his mind couldn't.
His wrist ached.
He looked down. The bronze bracelet glowed faintly with a silver hue now, and the wolf sigil seemed alive: its eyes faintly gleaming like twin stars. Every time he stared at it, something stirred in the back of his head. A sound.
A heartbeat.
No. A growl. He pressed his palm against his temple, trembling. "What's happening to me…?" No answer came.
Only the whisper of the wind through the canvas, carrying distant howls from the mountains. When he finally climbed out of the cart, the world seemed wrong.
The trees loomed taller, sharper, more alive than before. Every flake of snow shimmered with strange color.
The air was thick with energy he'd never noticed before: streams of faint light, flowing like invisible rivers between stones and roots. It wasn't beauty. It was awareness.
He could feel it, taste it: mana. Somewhere deep in his body, the sleeping power stirred again. He stumbled through the snow, every step leading him back toward the grave.
The mound was half-covered already, a gentle rise beneath the snow, marked only by a sword driven into the ground, Godfrey's sword, runes still faintly glowing.
Auron fell to his knees. The cold bit into his skin, but he didn't care. His chest tightened until he couldn't breathe. "You said I'd never be alone again," he whispered. "You lied." The wind didn't answer.
But the wolf bracelet pulsed again it was slow, rhythmic, almost comforting. A faint warmth spread from his wrist to his chest.
Then came the voice. Not in words, but in instinct, a thought that wasn't his own. Rise. Auron jerked up, looking around. No one was there.
The forest was empty, silent. He placed a hand on the sword's hilt. The runes flared to life, reacting to his touch. For a moment, he saw something in the light, a reflection, or perhaps a memory.
Godfrey, standing tall, laughing beside him. His eyes filled with pride.
The sun rises and sets, the wolf endures. Auron gritted his teeth.
"Then I'll endure." Far from the grave, in the frozen woods, something stirred. Auron wasn't alone. The assassins' corpses were gone, reduced to ash, but their deaths had not gone unnoticed.
Bloodshed of that scale drew things from the Veil: spirits, beasts, echoes of the divine and damned alike. And one such creature, drawn by the lingering mana of a Seventh-Star warrior, had begun to track the scent.
A massive Shadow Lynx, its coat matted and dark like damp fur, stalked silently through the pines. Its size was unnerving, dwarfing a grown man, and its paw prints left deep marks in the snow. Its eyes were flat, yellow, and intelligent glowed with an unhealthy, oily film of corrupted mana.
It smelled the blood of power.
And the blood of a boy. Auron didn't notice at first. He had taken the sword from the grave and was sitting beside it, trying to mimic the breathing exercises Godfrey had once shown him.
He didn't understand what he was doing, only that it made the chaos inside him settle a little.
The mana in his body moved sluggishly, heavy, like molten lead through narrow veins. When he closed his eyes, he saw flashes, the wolf's jaws, Malvio's tears, his grandfather's smile.
Each image bled into the next until all that remained was pain. The wind changed. Auron's eyes snapped open.
A faint shadow fell over him, not from the sun, but from a nearby tree. He barely had time to look up before the Shadow Lynx dropped from the branches, the impact shaking the ground under its immense weight.
Its claws, long and black, shot out toward him. Its scales shimmered like hammered steel. And its eyes, cold, yellow, intelligent, locked directly on him.
Auron stumbled back, breath catching in his throat. His sword felt far too heavy in his hands. The creature let out a low, guttural snarl that rattled the nearby trees. Somewhere, in the far recess of his mind, the wolf stirred. Run.
No, not a command. A warning. The Lynx lunged. Auron threw himself aside as the ground erupted where he'd been standing.
Snow and rock sprayed into the air. The shockwave sent him tumbling.
He scrambled up, swinging wildly with Godfrey's blade, the runes flaring with unstable light. The Lynx recoiled slightly, its gaze narrowing.
The boy wasn't ordinary prey. It sensed power, young, untamed, dangerous. Auron screamed, charging forward with a wordless cry, his grief turning into fury.
The sword met thick hide, sparks flying. The impact barely scratched the beast, but the runes on the blade flared brighter, reacting to his rage.
The Lynx's massive head whipped around. The strike hit him like a falling wall. He flew backward, crashing through a tree, the air punched out of his lungs.
His vision blurred. He couldn't move.
He couldn't breathe. The beast roared, a thunderous, world-shaking sound, and reared up on its hind legs to crush him. But as Auron lay there, broken, something inside him refused to die. He heard the voice again, closer now, clearer
The sun rises and sets. The wolf endures. His body began to glow. The bracelet burned against his wrist, the sigil pulsing with each beat of his heart.
His eyes snapped open, not blue, but molten gold. The air rippled. Snow melted around him in a perfect circle. A spectral wolf formed behind him, vast and luminous, its mane a storm of silver fire.
It growled, low and furious, as Auron rose to his feet. The ground trembled. Power, raw, blinding, divine, flooded through him.
The Lynx struck. Auron caught its massive paw with his bare hand. For a single heartbeat, the world held still.
Then came the sound: a crack like thunder as he stopped the blow. The boy's arm trembled, his muscles straining, light pouring from his veins.
His voice came out calm, steady. "Get away from my grandfather's grave." The wolf howled. Auron swung the sword. The world exploded in light.
The Lynx's body was thrown backward, its chest torn open by a crescent of golden fire. The air shuddered.
The snow turned to steam. For a moment, the beast let out a sound that was not pain, but awe, before its massive form collapsed, shaking the mountain beneath it. Auron stood in the center of the devastation, chest heaving, eyes burning gold.
The spectral wolf circled him once, its form flickering, then faded into mist. He fell to his knees beside the grave again.
The power drained from him, leaving only exhaustion and grief. The world was silent once more. Snow began to fall, not in mourning this time, but like a baptism.
Auron closed his eyes.
And for the first time since the night of blood, he slept, not as a boy, but as something new, something the heavens themselves would come to fear.
The heir of the Sun and the Wolf.