Ape Dark Ages – Year 519 post-Agreement
Hospital of Hope, BUMz City
Midnight of the fifth day after the rescue
Ana crossed the hospital's main corridor carrying Karma in her arms as if he were an exhausted child after a night that was too long.
Her wolf body was in partial transformation: swollen muscles, fangs showing, yellow eyes gleaming in the red twilight of the emergency lights.
But what moved each step was not hunger, not anger.
It was protection.
Pure.
Blind.
The same protection that made her cross cracked borders, ignore orders, and drag her brother back to the only place that still seemed safe.
She found the bed prepared in the isolation ward.
White sheets.
Heart monitor blinking slowly. Ziad Farhat was already there, surgical gloves on, mask lowered to his chin, looking at Karma with an expression Ana interpreted as deep concern.
"Put him here," Ziad said, his voice low and calm as always. "I'll take care of the rest."
Ana laid her brother down with infinite care, adjusting the pillow under his head, brushing a strand of sweaty hair from his forehead.
Karma murmured something incoherent, eyes half-closed, his mind still trapped in the web of manipulation that was corroding him from within.
"Will he be alright?" Ana asked, her voice hoarse with exhaustion.
Ziad nodded slowly.
"He will. I am the last living heir of the medical-military lineage. The last one who still knows how to fix what was broken inside. Trust me."
Ana trusted him. Because she needed to trust someone. Because the whole world was crumbling and that hospital was the last island of light.
She left the isolation ward to let Ziad work.
In the corridor, wounded soldiers looked at her with silent admiration.
News of the rescue had already spread: the she-wolf-firefighter who brought the sub-leader back from the abyss.
Someone even applauded softly as she passed.
But inside the isolation ward, when the door closed and the silence fell heavily,
Ziad Farhat changed.
He picked up a thin syringe from the instrument tray.
Colorless liquid inside.
No label.
No smell.
The poison syringe he himself had prepared hours before, while everyone slept.
With precise, almost affectionate movements, he injected the poison into the vein in Karma's arm.
His brother's body trembled once, then relaxed even more deeply into the induced sleep.
Ziad leaned in until he was inches from Karma's unconscious ear.
"You were useful, brother," she whispered, her voice now sweet and venomous like that of a true manipulator. "But the script needs a clean ending.
The final manipulation isn't your fault.
It's my signature."
Wings of translucent shadow briefly sprouted from Ziad's back.
Not the broken wings of the deserter fairy who helped at the hospital.
Perfect wings.
Ancient.
Wings of the manipulation fairy herself.
The villain everyone thought was hiding somewhere else.
The villain who never needed to hide because she was already inside them all.
He stood up, put the empty syringe in his lab coat pocket, and left the isolation ward as if nothing had happened.
The next morning, the hospital awoke to hell.
First a groan.
Then another.
Then dozens.
Injured patients who had been stable began convulsing.
Black blood trickled from the corners of their mouths. Skin turning translucent like the hungry silhouettes of the ancient Shadow Kingdom.
An unknown poison.
Fast.
Unstoppable.
The deaths began to rise exponentially.
Not from war wounds.
From what had been inside them from the beginning. From what Ziad had spread like a silent plague.
Ana ran to the isolated ward.
She found Karma still alive, but pale, sweating profusely, murmuring nonsensical words.
"Ziad!" she cried, searching for the veterinarian-doctor-heir.
But Ziad was no longer in the hospital.
He had disappeared into the night, leaving behind a trail of bodies and a message recorded on the main reception monitor, in letters that seemed written in blood:
"The allies of werewolves and humans are dying like a plague. There is no cure for what has already been accepted as medicine. The war will not be won by those who fight. It will be won by those who sow defeat before the battle begins."
In the sky above BUMz City,
the two moons watched.
One silvery, indifferent.
One red, almost satisfied.
Ana fell to her knees beside Karma's bed.
Her fangs retracted.
Her eyes filled with tears that wouldn't fall.
She had protected her brother.
She had brought him back.
She had inspired the hospital.
She had been admired.
And now she understood, too late,
that protection can also be the greatest form of blindness.
**End of Chapter 10**