"He carries the curse of the White Wolf. But when the medallion shatters, the forest awakens…and something older than demons answers the call."
Chapter 1:
The altar burned.No flames, only runes carved into his skin searing like hell itself biting through bone.
—Give me the wolf,— Luciano Kerens whispered to the stone. —Or curse me forever.
The wind answered with the stench of sulfur. And then… footsteps.The footsteps of his curse.
The moon hung over the forest like a pale eye, lighting the stone altar where Luciano knelt, gasping. Not from faith. From guilt.
The marks on his flesh blazed with a familiar fire, a reminder that the pact still lived. The storm had passed, but the darkness in his chest remained, thicker than the winter fog wrapped around the trees.
A branch snapped.A voice, sharp with resentment, froze his blood.
—Luciano…
He turned, slow as a man already resigned to fate. From between the trees, a slim figure stepped forward. Moonlight caught claws first—curved, lethal, gleaming like obsidian. Then the eyes: golden. Burning. The same eyes that haunted his nightmares.
—Sanathiel —he breathed, not as a name, but as a sentence.
The boy emerged from the shadows. His breathing was the only sound in the clearing, ragged and deep, as if the air itself burned him.
—Did you come to pray to your stone god? —Sanathiel's voice was a growl chained tight—. Or to beg forgiveness?
Luciano's gaze dropped to the silver medallion hanging from the boy's neck: a wolf howling at the moon. The same medallion he had given him, the night he pulled him from the ashes of Esperanza.
—You haven't changed, —Luciano lied, every word dragging them closer to the abyss—. You're still the boy I saved from the fire.
A snarl shook the air. Sanathiel advanced. In the moonlight, the scars across his chest were raw and bleeding.
—The fire you lit, —he spat.
White fur erupted from his skin, a mantle of living blades. His golden eyes burned with fury too human to be denied.
Luciano stumbled back against the altar. The runes scorched through his robe. He wanted to shout the truth: that the pact had been for him, to save the child who wept among corpses. But the mist rolling from Sanathiel's mouth reeked of gunpowder and charred flesh.
—Stop! —Luciano's voice broke as claws tore across his chest, leaving black wounds that bled thick—. You don't know what you're unleashing…
Sanathiel pinned him to the altar. In his eyes spun the cogs of an ancient mechanism: the Ritual of the Three Suns.
The mist shaped visions: Luciano decades younger, kneeling at this very altar, drinking shadow from a chalice while the small body of Sanathiel lay lifeless at his feet.
—It was the only way to save you! —he screamed.
A sharp whistle cut the clearing. Noah appeared, driving an obsidian dagger into Sanathiel's side, sparks flying on contact with lunar fur.
—How fast will it end, brother? —the vampire sneered, black-stained fangs gleaming—. The Master wants his drama in three acts.
Sanathiel hurled Luciano against a pine. The silver medallion hit the stone, fracturing with a sound like breaking constellations.
And for an instant, it did not reflect Sanathiel—but Aisha.
Her figure, glowing amber, lips trembling with a name she did not yet remember.
Sanathiel howled, not at the moon, but at the fractured medallion.
The forest answered. A voice, ancient as the roots, whispered:
—Until the darkness fades…
Silence fell. And far away, someone else heard it.
In a chamber lit by black candles, a boy opened his eyes. Violet pupils. White hair. Varek.
He had seen it all: Sanathiel's fury, Luciano's guilt, the broken medallion.
—Brother… —he murmured, calm as a player studying the board before the first move—. The curtain has risen. And I will decide when it falls.
The candles flickered, as if something older than gods approved.