The night hung heavy over Greyhaven, darker than ever, as if the city itself had learned to bow in silence.
The streets were empty, yet every corner, every window, every shadow thrummed with the presence of the Wolf.
Aren stood atop the cathedral, the wind whispering secrets around him.
The kingdom had bent. The lords obeyed. The cities feared. Even Rowan, the prince, remained a shadow of authority, powerless and aware.
Lysa approached, voice low, almost hesitant:
"They obey… but can fear last forever? Will loyalty endure?"
Aren's eyes, sharp and unyielding, scanned the horizon:
"Fear lasts as long as it is nurtured. Loyalty endures when doubt is constant. Shadows do not fade—they evolve.
The Wolf's dominion is not temporary. It is eternal. It is inevitability made flesh."
Caelis joined them silently, pointing toward the east.
"Even the fractured provinces… they tremble, yet they submit quietly. Every step we planned, every whisper, every shadow has bound them further."
"Yes," Aren replied. "The kingdom is ours—not through swords, not through crowns—but through the invisible chains of fear and inevitability.
The Wolf does not age. The Wolf does not die. The Wolf endures in shadows, in whispers, in every trembling heart."
Rowan, confined to the palace, realized fully that the crown was irrelevant.
All his strategies, all his alliances, all his hope—eroded quietly under the weight of inevitability.
Aren's gaze swept across the kingdom, north to south, east to west.
"The Wolf is eternal," he whispered.
"And the kingdom is his—not in name, not by law, not by blood—but in shadow, in fear, and in obedience that cannot be broken."
Greyhaven, and the lands beyond, lay silent.
The Wolf's heartbeat was now the kingdom's heartbeat.
And that heartbeat… would never cease.