**Zulphithos**
**
Dark Age of Apes – Year 519 post-Agreement
BUMz City, Mixed Werewolf-Human Territory
(where the name of the city still echoes the sound of the first explosion that marked the coexistence treaty)
Five days.
Five nights with no sign of Karma.
No howl, no shadow, no message scrawled on the wall in black paint.
Just silence.
And Karma's silence was always the loudest.
Ana was in BUMz City's makeshift operations center — an old port warehouse reinforced with lunar steel plates and an ancient human communications network.
Holographic maps trembled in the air, marking movements of Christopher Miklosko's black hands, advances of the shadow faeries, and the last known positions of the fractured alliance.
She was responsible for defense strategies.
The one that drew withdrawal lines that no one wanted to admit they needed to use.
But that morning, with the fake sun rising gray over the cracked horizon, Ana dropped the holographic marker on the ground.
— I'm going after him — he announced to the room full of human and werewolf officers.
The silence that came was worse than any explosion.
The human commander, an anciently scarred man named Reyes, crossed his arms.
—Torres, you are the best strategist we have here.
If you leave now, you'll lose focus.
And we lose the war before it really starts.
A werewolf sergeant, with gray fur, growled lowly:
— Karma is a walking risk.
Everyone knows that he is being… influenced.
If he has already fallen, you will only fall with him.
Ana looked at each face.
No support.
Just concern disguised as pragmatism.
"He's my brother," she said simply. — Half or reflex or whatever.
Five days of no contact means that either he's dead... or he's doing something that no one else will be able to undo.
She took the reinforced coat, the curved knife, and the moonbone fragment she still carried in her chest as an amulet.
— I'll be back.
With him.
Or with answers.
She left before anyone could give the order to stop her.
Her luck changed exactly three hours later, on a country road full of ancient craters.
Ziad Farhat was there.
Not as a beggar, not as a train robber, not as a spy.
As a sub-newcomer in the army — low rank, but eyes that had seen the worst of all wars.
He was overseeing the erection of a makeshift structure: white tents reinforced with shade cloth, portable moonlight generators, crates of medical supplies stacked like ramparts.
A field hospital.
The first real one since the war in the shadows became an open threat.
Ana stopped the stolen motorcycle next to him.
— Ziad?
What are you doing here?
He wiped his antiseptic-smeared hands on his pants.
— Opening what no one else wanted to open.
Hospital for the injured who will come.
Because I know they will come.
Many.
And if we wait for command to authorize it, it will be too late.
Ana looked at the tents.
There was already a small team at work: humans, werewolves, even a deserted fairy with broken wings helping to set up beds.
— You… deserted the battalion?
— No.
I asked for a transfer.
They said I was "too sentimental".
So they sent me here to shut me up.
I turned it into action.
He pointed to a newly hung sign at the entrance to the largest tent:
**HOSPITAL DA ESPERAÇÃO – CIDADE DO BUMz**
"War hurts. We heal."
Ana felt something move inside her.
Not the hunger of a wolf.
Something older.
Hope.
— Karma has been missing for five days — she said, her voice low.
Ziad nodded, as if he already knew.
— I heard rumors.
Black hands approaching the northern border.
If he's with the villain... or if she's inside him...
You're going to need a place to bring him back.
A safe place.
This place is me.
Ana looked at the hospital appearing out of nowhere.
For the wounded who did not yet exist, but already had a home.
"Thank you," he murmured.
Ziad shrugged.
— No thanks.
Just bring him alive.
And it brings you alive too.
She left again.
But something had changed.
When he returned — three days later, dragging a semi-conscious Karma, his mind broken by manipulation and the shaking hands of someone fighting against himself — the hospital was already full.
Not from the dead.
Of living.
And when Ana crossed the entrance carrying her brother on her shoulders,
the looks were no longer of doubt.
They were of admiration.
Commander Reyes was there.
The gray-haired sergeant.
Soldiers who previously called her a traitor.
They paved the way.
Reyes placed his hand on her shoulder.
— You brought him back.
And it brought us back too.
The rank of lieutenant is yours, Torres.
But more important than that…
You showed what we had forgotten:
that being human and wolf is not a contradiction.
It's strength.
Ana looked at Karma, now lying on a clean bed, being treated by Ziad.
She felt her fangs retract.
Hunger calms down.
For the first time in centuries,
She wasn't just a survivor.
She was admired.
Not by killing.
Not for winning.
For searching.
For bringing it back.
For still believing that it was possible to be better.
In the sky above BUMz City,
the two moons appeared together for the first time in months.
A silver one.
A red one.
And for the first time,
they seemed at peace.
**End of Chapter 9**