In the quiet sorrow of the den, the wolves mourned, but none felt the pain as deeply as the grey wolf mother. She looked as though she had aged twenty years overnight, her heart heavy with a familiar grief. This was not the first time she had watched her family torn apart by a more powerful creature.
Her first six pups and their father had been victims of a cunning green mountain lion. This lion was a master hunter, intelligent enough to know that a meal should be savored over time. It would memorize the scent of every wolf in a pack, then hunt them one by one until the group was nothing more than a memory and a well-sated appetite. The grey wolf mother had survived only because the lion chose to spare her. In its cold calculation, pregnant prey was more valuable alive, as it would eventually birth more food. She clung to this grim reason for being, sealing away her trauma to focus on the pups she was carrying. To protect them from their siblings' fate, she had moved thousands of kilometers away, finding a den hidden deep in the forest.
But nothing is truly hidden. Another predator, a white tiger, had found them. The mother couldn't decide which was crueler: the lion who ate her pups slowly or the tiger who devoured as many as it could in a single night. Now, she lay on the ground, tears streaming from her yellow eyes as she watched one of her last pups dying. Though they were grown, to her, they were still her beloved little ones.
The two remaining pack members, a white wolf and a grey wolf, stood by their dying brother, their eyes filled with pain. They had just buried what was left of their three other siblings, and now they were forced to watch as their brother slipped away. They had foraged for herbs, but they knew it was useless. Their eldest brother was beyond help—his intestines had been eaten, a limb was missing, and he was only clinging to life through sheer willpower and a useful, though insufficient, healing bloodline ability. He was their pack leader, having taken on their father's role long ago, and had defeated countless threats. But this time, their enemy was a level two nascent demonic beast. There was nothing to be done.
For days, the eldest brother lay in agony, watching his siblings desperately try to save him. One night, he made his decision. He had held onto a sliver of hope, not for himself, but for the pack, knowing his death would bring them even greater suffering. That night, he looked into the eyes of his younger brother, the white wolf, and communicated a single plea: "Kill me and take our pack away from this place before the white tiger returns."
Stunned, the white wolf's eyes filled with tears, as did his sister's. Their mother, who had been unresponsive for days, rose to her feet and looked out of the den. The white wolf, the smartest of them all, knew their time was up. He raised his foot and slashed down at his brother's neck with his sharp claws. Blood splattered, turning his white fur red. As his eldest and most beloved sibling died, the white wolf made a single vow: to protect what was left of his pack, to seek vengeance on those who had caused their suffering, and to make the pack powerful enough to never again face such a calamity.