The smell of blood and fur dragged Darian from the depths of sleep like a hook through water.
He gasped awake, nostrils flaring, heart hammering against his ribs as if trying to escape his chest. For one terrifying moment, he thought a wolf had broken into the house—could taste the copper-iron tang of fresh kill on his tongue, feel the coarse texture of animal hide brushing against his awareness like fingers trailing across his mind.
Then he remembered.
I am the wolf now.
Darian lay still on his straw pallet, staring up at the rust-eaten beams of his family's house. Morning light filtered through the cracks in the walls, pale and grey like everything else in this ash-cursed world. The blood he smelled came from the goat pen behind the house—old Meretha must have cut herself on the fence again. The fur belonged to his father's work cloak, hanging on the hook by the door, still carrying the scent of yesterday's hunt.
Yesterday. Had it only been yesterday?
His hand drifted to his chin, fingertips tracing the mark that had not been there two days ago. The tattoo was small—a single curved fang, black as obsidian against his brown skin—but it burned with a warmth that seemed to pulse in rhythm with his heartbeat. His first Beast-Mark. Proof that after four years of training, of bleeding, of pushing his body beyond what he thought possible, he had finally awakened.
He was Feral-Touched now. First tattoo. The lowest rung on a very tall ladder, yes, but a rung nonetheless. He was no longer Darian the goatherd's son, Darian the village boy who would live and die within sight of the same grey mountains his grandfather had stared at. He was Darian of the Wolf Line, and today—today—the caravan would arrive to take him to Mithrakesh.
The thought sent a shiver through him that had nothing to do with the morning cold.
Outside, the animals were beginning their dawn chorus. Goats bleated their hunger, chickens clucked and scratched at the packed earth, and somewhere in the distance, a dog howled at the fading stars. Before the awakening, these sounds had been merely noise—the familiar backdrop of village life that his ears had long ago learned to ignore. Now each sound was distinct, layered, meaningful. The goats were not just hungry; he could hear which ones were desperate and which ones merely complaining. The dog's howl carried loneliness in its wavering notes.
And beneath it all, thrumming through the earth itself, he sensed the great pulse of life that connected every beast to every other. The ancient bloodline that slept within his veins recognized its kin.
This is what it means to be awakened, Darian thought, and a grin spread across his face despite his exhaustion. This is what I've been training for.
"Darian!"
His father's voice shattered the moment—a roar that seemed to shake dust from the rafters. Khorvan Ashkanar had not awakened himself; the blood had run thin in their branch of the family, and three generations had passed since anyone bearing their name had earned a tattoo. But Khorvan's voice carried authority nonetheless, the kind that came from surviving fifty-three winters in a land that killed the weak and the slow.
"If you're not out of that bed in the next thirty heartbeats, I'll drag you out by your ears! Awakened or not, there's work to be done!"
Darian scrambled upright, wincing as stiff muscles protested the sudden movement. The awakening ceremony had not been painful—not exactly—but his body was still adjusting to its new reality. His senses kept overwhelming him, flooding his mind with information he had never needed to process before. The scratch of wool against his skin felt magnified tenfold. The taste of his own morning breath was actively offensive.
He pulled on his clothes with practiced efficiency: rough-spun trousers, a patched tunic that had belonged to his older brother before the coughing sickness took him, leather boots worn soft with age. Simple garments for a simple life. He wondered if he would ever wear such things again after today.
Mithrakesh, he thought, rolling the name around in his mind like a precious stone. The holy city. Home of the great temples where the First Beasts were worshipped. Training grounds for those who walked the Umbral Beast path, where masters of seven and eight tattoos transformed into creatures of legend.
He had never seen a city. Had never been more than a day's walk from the village where he had been born eighteen summers ago. The farthest he had traveled was to the Resonance Stone at the edge of their territory—a journey of four hours that had felt like crossing into another world entirely.
And now strangers would come to take him to a place he could barely imagine, where he would live among people who spoke with accents he had only heard in traders' stories, learning secrets that his ancestors had killed and died for.
The excitement bubbled up in his chest like water from a spring. And beneath it, cold and patient, the fear waited.
What if I fail? What if I'm not strong enough? What if I never see my family again?
He crushed the thoughts before they could take root. There was no room for doubt. Doubt was weakness, and weakness was death—that was the first lesson of the Beast Path, taught before anything else. If he let fear rule him, he might as well have never awakened at all.
The main room of the house was small and cluttered with the debris of survival: baskets of grain, strings of dried meat hanging from the ceiling, tools leaning against walls, a fire pit in the center still glowing with last night's embers. His mother stood by the cooking stone, stirring a pot of porridge with the mechanical rhythm of a woman who had performed this task ten thousand times before. His younger sister Mira sat in the corner, mending a torn fishing net with needle and thread.
Neither of them looked at him as he entered.
"Sit," his mother said. "Eat."
Darian sat. His mother ladled porridge into a wooden bowl and set it before him without meeting his eyes. Her movements were precise, controlled, revealing nothing. But his new senses caught what his old ones never would have: the slight tremor in her hands, the too-quick rhythm of her breathing, the salt-water scent of tears that had dried on her cheeks sometime in the night.
She was proud of him. She was terrified for him. She was already grieving the son she might never see again.
Darian wanted to say something—to reassure her, to promise he would return covered in glory, to thank her for the years of sacrifice that had allowed him to train instead of work the fields full-time. But the words stuck in his throat, too large and awkward to force through.
He ate his porridge in silence.
Mira glanced up from her mending, her dark eyes meeting his for just a moment. She was twelve—old enough to understand what his leaving meant, young enough to still show her feelings on her face. He saw envy there, and admiration, and a desperate longing that he found difficult to interpret.
"Will you come back?" she asked quietly.
"Mira—" their mother began.
"I will," Darian said, and was surprised to find that he meant it. "When I have my third tattoo, maybe my fourth. I'll come back with enough coin to buy Father new goats and Mother new cloth. I'll come back and tell you stories about the great city, about the masters and their beast forms, about—"
"Enough dreaming." Khorvan's voice cut through the room as the door banged open, admitting a gust of cold air and the patriarch himself. He was a large man, broad-shouldered and thick-armed from a lifetime of physical labor, with a grey beard that reached his chest and eyes like chips of flint. "The caravan will arrive before midday, and there's still the morning feeding to do. The goats don't care about your new tattoo, boy. Neither do the chickens."
"Yes, Father."
Darian rose from his seat, his bowl only half-empty. His mother made a sound of protest—she hated to see food wasted—but he was already moving toward the door. The last morning. The last feeding. The last time he would smell the particular combination of hay and animal musk and wood smoke that had defined his entire existence.
The thought made his chest tight.
Outside, the grey light had strengthened, revealing the village of Varketh in all its humble reality. Twenty houses clustered together on the slope of a hill, surrounded by terraced fields and animal pens and the great stone wall that kept out the worst of the ash-storms. In the distance, the Grey Mountains rose like the teeth of a sleeping giant, their peaks lost in the perpetual haze that gave the continent its name.
Darian had been born in this village. Had learned to walk on these dirt paths, had played in these fields, had kissed his first girl behind the grain storage and cried at his brother's funeral pyre beneath these same ash-colored skies. For eighteen years, Varketh had been his entire world.
And now he was leaving.
The goat pen sat at the edge of his family's small plot of land—thirty animals in total, a respectable herd by village standards. Old Meretha, the herd matriarch, raised her head as he approached, her yellow eyes regarding him with the particular contempt that goats reserved for all of humankind. But she did not flee when he opened the gate, and the others followed her lead.
Darian moved among them, checking hooves and horns, counting heads to ensure none had wandered in the night. The work was familiar, mindless, allowing his thoughts to drift back to the awakening ceremony.
It had been… easier than he expected. And stranger.
He had trained for four years under the village's only awakened practitioner—old Seruvan, a two-tattoo Beast-Blooded who had lost his left arm in a border skirmish decades ago. Four years of exercises designed to strengthen the connection between body and beast. Four years of meditation, of controlled breathing, of learning to listen to the whispers of the blood. Four years of hoping that when the time came, the Resonance Stone would accept him.
Yesterday, it had.
He remembered the walk to the Stone—a pillar of black crystal that jutted from the earth like a broken bone, its surface covered in glyphs that no one could read anymore. He remembered placing his hands on its cold surface, feeling the ancient power humming beneath the stone. He remembered pouring his will into it, all the effort and sacrifice and desperate yearning of those four years flowing out of him like water from a vessel.
And then the Stone had answered.
Light had exploded behind his eyes—not white, but red, the red of fresh blood and burning embers and the dying sun. He had felt something stirring in his chest, something that had always been there but dormant, asleep, waiting. It rose up through him like a great beast surfacing from deep water, and when it reached his skin—
Pain. Brief but absolute. The sensation of flesh rearranging itself, of something being written into his very being.
When he opened his eyes, Seruvan was smiling. And Darian could feel the fang on his chin, still warm from its creation.
"Welcome to the Path," the old man had said. "May you walk it with honor."
Now, standing among his father's goats, Darian extended his right hand and willed the change. It came easier than he expected—his nails lengthening, thickening, curving into points that were not quite claws but could no longer be called human. The sensation was strange but not unpleasant, like stretching a muscle that had been cramped for too long.
He stared at his transformed fingertips, watching the grey morning light play across their dark surfaces. This was only the beginning. One tattoo gave him enhanced senses and minor transformations. By the third tattoo, he would be able to partially shift his entire body. By the fifth, he could take full beast form. And if he ever reached the seventh or eighth…
Legends spoke of Sovereign Beasts who could reshape their flesh at will, who commanded packs of lesser beasts with a thought, who ruled territories as large as kingdoms. The Shah-Alpha himself was said to transform into a manticore of such size and power that armies fled before his shadow.
Could that be me someday? The thought was intoxicating. Terrifying. Could I rise that high?
"Don't let it go to your head."
Darian spun, his claws retracting instinctively. Seruvan stood at the edge of the goat pen, leaning on his walking stick, his remaining arm tucked into his cloak. The old man's eyes were sharp despite his years, and the twin faded tattoos on his neck—a paw print and a crescent moon—marked him as one who had walked the path before.
"Master Seruvan. I didn't hear you approach."
"No, you didn't. And that's the first lesson of what you'll learn in Mithrakesh." The old man's voice was dry as autumn leaves. "Having sharp senses means nothing if you don't use them. You were too busy dreaming of glory to notice me crossing half the village."
Darian felt heat rise to his cheeks. "I—yes, Master. You're right."
Seruvan grunted, neither accepting nor rejecting the apology. He moved to the fence, his movements slow but steady, and rested his arm on the top rail. For a long moment, he simply watched the goats grazing, his expression unreadable.
"The caravan master's name is Zerveth," he said finally. "She's third tattoo, serpent line, and she has little patience for young pups who think they're special. You'll keep your head down, do what you're told, and cause no trouble on the journey. Understand?"
"Yes, Master."
"When you reach Mithrakesh, you'll present yourself at the Temple of the First Fang. Tell them Seruvan of Clan Ashreth sent you. My name still carries some weight there, though less than it once did." A pause. "You'll enter as a supplicant, the lowest of the low. You'll clean floors and carry water and suffer indignities that will make you want to kill someone. You will endure it. You will learn. And if the blood is strong enough in you…"
He trailed off, his eyes growing distant.
"Master?"
"There are those who believe the Beast Path is simple," Seruvan said quietly. "That it's merely about strength and savagery, about embracing the animal within. They are fools. The beast is not a gift. It is a test. Every day you wake with the wolf in your blood, you must choose whether you will master it or be mastered by it. The tattoos are not just marks of power—they are chains, binding the beast to your will. The more tattoos you earn, the stronger the beast becomes, and the stronger you must become to control it."
He turned to look at Darian directly, and his eyes were hard.
"Some men reach the fourth or fifth tattoo and lose themselves. They become more beast than man, ruled by hunger and rage. Others keep their humanity but never advance, too afraid of what they might become. The ones who rise highest are those who learn to hold both—the man and the beast, in perfect balance."
Darian swallowed. "And what about you, Master? Why did you stop at two?"
For a moment, he thought the old man would strike him. Seruvan's face went rigid, his remaining hand clenching on his walking stick hard enough to whiten the knuckles. But then the tension drained away, replaced by something that might have been sadness.
"I made choices," he said. "Some good, some bad. I learned what I was willing to sacrifice for power—and what I wasn't." He pushed off from the fence, already turning away. "The caravan will be here in two hours. Finish your work, say your goodbyes, and meet me at the village gate. There are things I must tell you before you go. Things I should have told you long ago."
And then he was walking away, his stick tapping against the hard-packed earth, leaving Darian with a stomach full of questions and a heart full of something that felt like the beginning of fear.