By the third morning after the gala, Amara had developed a new pre-drawing ritual:
Make coffee.
Stare at tablet.
Stare at phone.
Decide to be healthy and not open social media.
Open social media anyway.
She told herself it was part of "operational awareness."
Zara told her it was doomscrolling with extra steps.
Either way, her thumbs were too fast for her own good.
Her notifications had evolved from chaotic to biblical plague. Mentions, tags, DMs, reposts. Half her feed was still gala photos and ship memes; the other half was conspiracy threads and hot takes about "fiction vs reality."
She filtered using the tools Zara had built into her private dash.
Hide: blocked words, explicit threats, obvious bots, anything containing "bite me daddy."
Show: longform analysis, lore threads, meta essays.
She should have left that last category unchecked.
The first few posts were comfortingly familiar: passionate, wrong, harmless.
User: PanelWitch
"Okay but thematically, the fact that BlackSun put the gala dance next to Episode 39's trap arc is genius. She's paralleling how public performance and private war mirror each other. The roses on the table = blood, the chandelier = precarious peace, the dress color = moral gray. Don't talk to me I'm writing an essay."
User: wolfgirl420
"Do we think Lucian has read the fic where he and the CEO analog switch bodies?? Asking for a friend."
User: economic_howl
"Wild that my macroeconomics professor cited the 'Wolf of Ink' storyline as an example of narrative impacting stock volatility and I had to sit there vibrating in my chair."
Amara smiled despite herself.
This was the part of fandom she still loved: the earnest overthinking, the ridiculous jokes, the sheer volume of feelings over things she'd drawn in a hoodie.
Then she saw it.
It was buried halfway down a long discussion thread titled:
[SERIOUS LORE] If BlackSun's World Were Real, How Would the Pack Structures Actually Work?
That alone would've been normal. People had been making fake wolf taxonomy charts since episode five.
What made her thumb hesitate were the tags at the top:
#longpost #meta #plsDon'tReblogIfYouKnowTooMuch
User: InkBetweenLines.
She didn't recognize the handle. Their avatar was just a black circle with a thin silver ring around it. Clean. Nondescript.
She tapped.
The post unfolded into a wall of text.
I see a lot of cute ship charts and aesthetic edits, but if we're talking about "how would this world work if it were real," we need to look at the structures implied in BlackSun's panels.
DISCLAIMER: This is all interpretation. Don't harass the creator. Don't take this as fact. We're having fun here. Right? :)
So far, so normal.
She skimmed, prepared to roll her eyes at someone's confident misreading.
Then her stomach dropped.
1. The Gray pack is not a monolith. Canon "Gray" is actually a coalition of at least three sub-packs: the Downtown spine (city tower wolves), the Riverside (those referenced in the flood arc), and the Outer Ring (suburban patrols).
If this were real, "Gray Holdings" would be the human-facing shell of one of those, with the others attached by Accord treaties. Note how the rooftop silhouettes in Ep 12 and Ep 31 have different body shapes and fighting stances: that's different training, different terrain.
Amara froze.
Those terms—Downtown spine, Riverside, Outer Ring—were not in the comic.
They were how Lucian's council had casually referred to their sectors on the territorial map.
She'd only heard them in the bunker room, three levels down.
Her pulse kicked up.
She kept reading.
2. The so-called "rival pack" is misnamed by fandom. They're not just "the bad guys." If we follow the clues, there are at least two distinct enemy forces: one that favors bombs and chaos (let's call them Ash-Circle, for the ash/smoke imagery) and one that prefers surgical strikes and leverage (Thorn-Line, see the repeated thorn motifs in the alley panels).
Ash and thorn. Ashridge and Thornbite, with the serial numbers half-filed off.
She hadn't used those names in the comic either.
These two groups are currently in uneasy alliance. You can tell by the way the silhouettes stand in Ep 25 versus Ep 32—there's distance, not pack closeness. If this were happening in a real city, the alliance would be held together by necessity and a shared grudge against the "Gray" coalition.
Her vision fuzzed around the edges.
She scrolled.
The next section was worse.
3. Timelines & Upcoming Moves (Speculation!)
This is where it gets messy. If you track the in-comic references to "gas leaks," power surges, and unnatural storms, and you cross them with public news reports about the fictional city (BlackSun's mentioned street names + skyline clues), a pattern emerges.
Assuming the story is even loosely following a real conflict, here's what I'd expect to see "next," within the world:
• An attempted supply-line cut in the south docks, framed as a union dispute. (Riverside wolves will be pulled thin here.)
• A coordinated "accident" during a charity event tied to the wolves' front-facing foundation, used as cover to plant surveillance or worse.
• A cross-river incursion near the east bridge, on or just after a full moon, masked by a city-wide blackout.
She felt cold.
The docks.
The foundation gala.
The east bridge.
Those weren't random.
In Lucian's last briefing with the council—the one she'd half-listened to while sketching Eira's tired profile and Rao's clenched fists—those had been the three red-circled locations on the map.
Planned enemy moves.
Classified intel.
She'd assumed they were provisional. "Possible threats."
This stranger was laying them out in her comment section like a theorycraft wishlist.
If our "hero pack" is smart, they'll reinforce the docks from the water side, not the street, and they'll assume the gala incident isn't about killing anyone—it's about information gathering. The bridge move is trickier; you buy time there with weather and decoys, or you bleed.
Again, this is all just me overthinking a story I like. Don't take it too seriously.
But if any of this sounds familiar to anyone who's actually out there, maybe… wake up. The script you think you're following has already been read.
— IBL
Amara's heart pounded so hard she could feel it in her teeth.
The script you think you're following has already been read.
Her hand tightened around the phone, knuckles whitening.
"Zara," she said aloud, though no one was in the room.
A second later, as if she'd been listening anyway—which she probably had—Zara's voice came through the tiny earbud Amara still hadn't learned to take out.
"Yeah?" Zara said around a mouthful of something. "If this is about the fic where my brother—"
"Shut up and look at what I'm sending you," Amara said, voice shaking.
She screenshotted the thread, scrolling to catch as much as she could, and sent it through their encrypted chat.
There was silence for three beats.
Then: "On my way."
Zara arrived less than a minute later, barefoot, hair haphazard, hoodie thrown over pajamas. She didn't bother with greetings; she went straight to the bed, flopped down beside Amara, and commandeered the phone.
"This better not be a ship war," she muttered.
"It's—just read," Amara said.
Zara's expression shifted as she scrolled.
Playful, then focused, then something very close to alarm.
She read it twice.
"You didn't write this," she said, more statement than question.
"No," Amara snapped. "Have you seen me write the words 'Downtown spine' anywhere?"
Zara's jaw clenched.
"Lucian's going to love this," she said, tone flat.
Her fingers moved in a blur as she forwarded the screenshots to another channel, this one labelled WAR-ROOM / RED.
"Could it be a really good guess?" Amara asked, hating the hope in her own voice.
Zara snorted without humor.
"'Guessing' that Ashridge and Thornbite are separate factions in uneasy alliance?" she said. "Guessing about the docks, the gala, and the east bridge specifically? Using our internal sector nicknames? No. This is either a leak… or a warning."
"A warning from who?" Amara demanded. "An enemy? An ally? Unsynced's secret blog?"
"Let's find out," Zara said.
Her phone buzzed.
She glanced at it.
"Lucian's in the war room," she said. "He wants us there. Now."
Amara's stomach did a slow, reluctant flip.
"I'm not dressed for a war room," she said weakly, gesturing at her T-shirt and fuzzy socks.
Zara tossed her a hoodie.
"Congratulations," she said. "You're now."
The war room on B3 was all hard edges and cold light at this hour.
Screens lined the walls, some showing city maps, others scrolling code, others frozen on stills from the gala. The oval table glowed faintly where lines of silver in the wood caught the overhead lamps.
Lucian stood at the far end, palms flat on the table, head bowed as if he were praying to a god made of spreadsheets.
When they entered, he looked up.
His eyes were gold.
Not full-wolf, not loss-of-control. Just… closer to the surface than usual.
He held her phone in one hand.
"I assume you've read it," he said.
"Yes," Amara said. "Twice. I'd like a refund."
Eira was there too, leaning against the wall with a tablet, expression grave. Rao sat stiffly near the middle of the table, arms crossed. A few other council wolves hovered at the edges, drawn by the disturbance.
Zara moved to her usual spot by the nearest console, fingers already tapping on a keyboard.
"I pulled the original post," she said. "Deleted it from public view. Snapshotted responses. Flagged the account. But it's already been cached and screenshotted by at least twelve users. The ideas are out there."
"Can we scrub it?" Rao grumbled.
"We can smother it," Zara said. "Flood the tags with fluff. Ship threads. Meme chains. Bury the serious stuff under ten thousand 'CEO x Artist cute moments' edits. But we can't erase what certain people have already seen."
Lucian's expression didn't change. Only his knuckles, just slightly too white where his hand gripped the phone.
He tapped the screen.
The thread appeared on the main display, enlarged.
The room read it together.
Everything sounded worse in silence.
When they got to the "upcoming moves," Rao swore softly in another language.
"That's our intel," he said. "Word for word."
"Not word for word," Eira said, eyes narrowed. "They've disguised the names. Tweaked the phrasing. Enough that a human reader sees 'lore analysis.' But the bones are there."
She pulled up a second window: an internal document, stamped with the Accord's sigil. POTENTIAL ADVERSARY MOVES – Q4 RISK OUTLOOK.
Side by side, the similarity was undeniable.
Same three locations.
Same order.
Same framing: docks as supply line, foundation event as info grab, bridge as high-risk incursion.
Someone had taken their classified projections and turned them into fandom meta.
Lucian's jaw worked once.
"Who had access to this report?" he asked quietly.
"Council members," Eira said. "Sector leads. A handful of Accord analysts. Anyone you brief personally. That's it."
Rao bristled. "You think one of ours is leaking to humans?"
"I think someone is using the comment section of the Moon-Scribe's comic as a drop point," Eira said. "Whether they're 'ours' or 'theirs' is the question."
Amara felt like the room was tilting.
"Why my comments?" she demanded. "There are a million encrypted channels. Shadow chats. Magical owl mail. Why here?"
"Because it's noisy," Eira said. "High traffic. High churn. Humans and wolves mixed. Perfect place to hide something important in a sea of nonsense."
"And because you read them," Zara added softly. "Consistently. Whoever this is knows you'll see it."
Amara swallowed.
"So this is… for me," she said.
"Or through you," Lucian said.
He straightened, the shift from simmering fury to cold clarity almost audible.
"We have two main possibilities," he said. "One: an ally or whistleblower in the supernatural world, trying to warn us. They leak intel as 'theory' where they think our Moon-Scribe will notice. Two: an enemy strategist, feeding half-truths and bait to manipulate our responses."
He nodded at the screen.
"Either way, it means something we thought was contained is not. That's the part I care about first."
Amara crossed her arms, hugging herself.
"Can Zara trace them?" she asked. "Find where 'InkBetweenLines' lives?"
Zara winced.
"I can get as far as the VPN they're using," she said. "It's… not one of ours. Not human-standard either. Feels like piggybacking on Accord infrastructure. If I push harder, I risk tripping alarms that say 'hi, yes, Gray Holdings is sniffing your cables.'"
"So they're careful," Eira said.
"And smart," Zara added. "They know how to scrub their footprints. Their language is… neutral. No regional slang that sticks. No insider terms beyond the ones they want us to notice."
"So this could be Unsynced," Amara said.
Everyone looked at her.
She flushed but didn't back down.
"We know there's at least one player out there who doesn't show up properly on cameras," she said. "Who noticed the trap before it sprung. Who watched us at the gala. Someone who knows enough to slip between panels."
Rao snorted. "Or it's just a traitor with a laptop."
"Could be both," Eira said. "Let's not rule anything out."
Lucian's gaze lingered on the words on the screen.
"The script you think you're following has already been read," he murmured, almost to himself.
"That line," Amara said. "It felt… pointed."
Eira nodded slowly.
"That's what I meant by 'through you,'" she said. "Whoever 'InkBetweenLines' is, they're aware of how this world works. Of scripts. Of panels. Of the overlap between your art and our reality. They're talking in your language."
Amara sat down heavily in the nearest chair.
"So now my comments are an espionage channel," she said. "Great. Love that for me."
Lucian's gaze snapped to her, something like regret flickering under the gold.
"You're not at fault," he said. "If anything, this proves what we've been saying: your comic is a convergence point. Stories, intel, speculation—they all stick to it."
"That doesn't make me feel better," she said.
His expression hardened again.
"It's not supposed to," he said. "It's supposed to make us act."
He turned to Zara.
"Archive everything this account has ever posted," he said. "Cross-reference with Accord logs. See if any of their 'theories' align with events from the last year. If we've been warned before and missed it, I want to know."
"On it," Zara said. "Already crawling."
"To Eira," he said. "Tighten access on future risk briefs. Smaller circle. Assume someone in that list is compromised until proven otherwise. Quietly."
"Which means?" she asked.
"Which means," he said, "we feed certain details to specific nodes and see which ones show up in 'fan theories' next."
Rao growled approval.
"A truth trap," he said. "I like it."
Amara felt a queasy lurch.
"You're going to use my readers as… litmus paper," she said.
"Not your readers," Lucian corrected. "One ghost in the machine. We'll design the bait carefully. Harmless, if it leaks. But distinctive enough to tag our leak."
"And what if they're trying to help us?" she shot back. "What if this is some terrified pack analyst whose Alpha won't listen, so they're sneaking warnings into my comments because it's the only place they know I'll look?"
"Then they should have come to us through Accord channels," Rao snarled.
"Maybe they tried," Amara said. "Maybe they got shut down. Maybe they died."
Silence.
Eira's eyes moved thoughtfully between them.
"Both of you are right," she said. "We treat this as hostile until proven otherwise. But we also leave open the possibility that there's a sympathetic hand behind it. Either way, the method is dangerous. Broadcasting intel, even disguised, invites attention. From them. From us. From whatever sits between."
She glanced at Amara on that last word.
Lucian exhaled slowly, his jaw tight.
"I don't like unknowns," he said.
"You live with me," Amara muttered. "You're doing great."
A few wolves, even Rao, huffed quiet laughs.
The moment of levity didn't last.
"Amara," Lucian said.
She looked up.
"You don't read your comments alone anymore," he said. "Not the deep threads. Not the long metas. If you see anything like this again, you bring it straight to us."
Her hackles went up.
"So I'm grounded now?" she said. "From my own fandom?"
"This isn't about control," he said. "It's about safety. Yours. Ours. If your comment section is becoming a dropbox for supernatural leaks, you cannot treat it as casual entertainment."
"And if I ignore it?" she asked. "What if I just… stop. No scrolling, no lurking. Just post and close. Would that fix your problem?"
"No," Eira said before he could answer. "Because then we're blind to a channel our enemies—or allies—are using. We need your eyes. We just don't need you getting hit with this alone."
Amara slumped back.
"So my choices are: be the unwilling moderator of a secret war forum, or be the reason we miss the next warning," she said. "Awesome. Love a good illusion of choice."
Lucian's gaze softened fractionally.
"I'm asking you," he said, voice lower, "not ordering. But I will say this: if you read something that shakes you like this did, and you don't tell me—"
"You'll what?" she cut in. "Ground me from the internet? Lock me in the tower for real this time?"
Gold flared in his eyes.
The room held its breath.
Zara looked between them, worry etched across her face.
Eira watched, inscrutable.
Lucian inhaled once, deeply.
"When something threatens you," he said carefully, "it threatens my pack. Our pack. We respond. That is not control. That is obligation."
The word our did something weird and traitorous to her chest.
She ignored it.
"And when something threatens your carefully curated illusion of control," she said, "you respond twice as hard."
"Correct," he said, without flinching.
She stared at him.
He stared back.
Finally, she exhaled, a little shaky.
"Fine," she said. "I'll bring you the weird meta. But I'm keeping my own mod powers. If I want to hide a particularly cursed ship debate before it causes a pack schism, I reserve the right."
"Agreed," he said at once.
Rao blinked. "We're negotiating comment policy now?" he muttered.
"Welcome to the twenty-first century," Zara said.
Lucian turned to Zara again.
"In the meantime," he said, "if you see this handle pop up under any other names, any other posts, I want a ping. Even if it's on some obscure fandom blog about wolf romance tropes."
"It will be," Zara said. "These people never stay in one place."
"And," he added, looking back at the frozen thread, "we quietly adjust our plans for docks, gala, and bridge."
"We already passed the gala," Rao said.
Lucian's mouth thinned.
"And we saw our unsynced friend there," he said. "Which confirms at least one part of this 'speculation.' The other two we preempt. Change patrol rotations. Move supplies. Set false trails. If we're lucky, we'll catch whoever wrote this lining up their predictions with a suddenly wrong script."
"If we're unlucky?" Eira asked.
"Then they adapt faster than we do," he said. "And we learn we were up against more than just packs and one fate-artist."
That landed like a stone on the table.
Amara watched the words "wake up" blinking on the screen, cursor still hovering over the last line of the post.
…the script you think you're following has already been read.
For months, she'd wrestled with the idea that the story in her head was ahead of reality.
Now she was looking at someone who seemed to be ahead of them.
Somewhere out there, a person—wolf, human, something else—was treating her comment section like a margin in the world's ledger. Writing cryptic notes, hinting at plot beats they shouldn't know.
Someone inside the supernatural world was leaking.
To her readers.
To her.
Through her.
She suddenly felt very, very tired.
Lucian must have sensed it.
"Meeting adjourned," he said abruptly. "Eira, Rao, stay. Everyone else, give us a minute."
The room rustled as wolves filed out.
Zara hesitated, then squeezed Amara's shoulder before slipping away to her consoles in the outer room.
When the door closed and the spell of "official business" loosened a little, Lucian circled the table and came to stand beside her chair.
Up close, the gold in his eyes had dimmed slightly, but it was still there, banked heat.
"You okay?" he asked quietly.
She let out a short, humorless laugh.
"Define 'okay,'" she said. "My fandom just leveled up from ship wars to espionage, my comment section is a leak point, and I'm apparently the only person the leak wants to talk to."
He didn't flinch from the bleakness.
"I meant," he said, "is your head okay. Your… power. Any pain? Static?"
She checked in with her body.
There was a buzz behind her eyes, like the low hum of a machine left on in another room. Not sharp, not overwhelming. Just present.
"Buzzing," she said. "Like the story is… watching."
His jaw tightened.
"I don't like that answer," he said.
"Join the club," she said.
He looked at the screen one last time, then at her.
"We'll find them," he said. "Whoever this is. Ally or enemy. Unsynced or just very clever. We'll stop them from turning your space into their playground."
"You can't promise that," she said.
"I can promise we'll try," he said. "And that you won't be alone in it."
Her throat tightened.
"Lucian," she said. "If this is someone trying to help—"
"Then we'll protect them too," he said. "If we can. Once we know what they're doing and why."
His hand hovered there, near her shoulder, not quite touching.
"Until then," he said, voice low, "you don't carry this by yourself. That's not negotiable."
Against her own instincts, against the voice in her head that screamed this is dangerous, she leaned into his palm when it finally settled, warm and solid, on her shoulder.
Just for a moment.
"Fine," she said quietly. "But next time the universe wants to leak state secrets, it can do it through someone else's spam folder."
He huffed a breath that was almost a laugh.
"I'll see what I can do," he said.
On the screen, the words stayed fixed:
…wake up.
As they left the war room together, Amara had the uncomfortable feeling that the comment wasn't just for the wolves sleepwalking through their own patterns.
It was for her.
For the girl who'd thought she could draw the war from a safe distance, only to discover that every line she inked now ran through a world of eyes—and that somewhere, hidden among the memes and meta and thirst posts, another hand had picked up a pen and started writing in the margins of her story.
Someone inside the supernatural world was leaking through her comment section.
And the narrative war had just acquired a new, invisible combatant.