Chapter 1:
The altar burned.There were no flames, but the runes on his skin seared as if hell itself had bitten into his bones.—Give me the wolf —he whispered to the stone—. Or curse me forever.The wind answered with the stench of sulfur.And behind it... footsteps.The footsteps of his curse.
"The moon hung over the forest like a pale eye, lighting the stone altar where Luciano Kerens knelt, gasping. Not out of faith. Out of guilt."
The marks on his skin burned with a familiar fire, reminding him the pact still lived.The storm had passed, but the darkness in his chest lingered—thicker than the winter fog cloaking the trees. The cold bit his skin, but that didn't matter. What truly consumed him was the weight of the oath carved into his bones—a pact that had sealed the fate of three generations.His eyes, dulled by decades of shadow, scanned the cracks in the altar. The stones, worn by time, still exhaled the same stench of sulfur from that night.
A crack of breaking branches shattered the silence.Before he could turn, a voice heavy with resentment froze his blood.
—Luciano...
He turned with the slow resignation of someone who already knows what's coming.From between the trees, a slender figure approached. Moonlight kissed the claws first: curved, lethal, gleaming like obsidian. Then the eyes: golden, burning. Identical to those Luciano saw every night in his nightmares.
—Sanathiel —he murmured, not as a name, but as a sentence.
The young man stepped fully into the light. His breath was the only sound in the forest, ragged and deep, as if the air scorched his lungs. In his hands, claws flexed with a crack of sinew.
—Did you come to pray to your stone god? —Sanathiel's voice was a contained snarl—. Or to beg for forgiveness?
Luciano didn't answer. His gaze fell to the silver medallion hanging from the boy's neck: a wolf howling at a full moon. The same one he had given him the night he found him among the smoldering ruins of Pueblo Esperanza.
—You haven't changed —Luciano lied, knowing each word dragged them closer to the abyss—. You're still the boy I pulled from the flames.
A growl shook the air. Sanathiel stepped forward, and for the first time, Luciano saw the scars: claw marks slashing across his torso, fresh and bleeding—more recent than the ones he bore himself.
—The flames you lit —Sanathiel spat.
He felt the heat rise in his throat, as if every word he swallowed turned to lava.
Zaira.
If she were here, she would take his face in those trembling hands that once healed his wounded back and say what she always did, in that hidden cabin among the roots:
"You're not like the one who did this to you, Sanathiel. Don't destroy what you can still save."
But Zaira was gone. Only her voice remained, locked in a tattered corner of memory. A sweet voice... broken by fire.
He doesn't save. He punishes.
His resentment was stronger than any prayer. And her words—no matter how real they stung—weren't enough to cool his hate.
Not this time.
His white fur burst from his skin like a mantle of living blades—more eruption than transformation. Every hair erupted like a thorn until only those golden eyes remained, glowing with a fury too human.
The words echoed through Luciano's skull like funeral bells.Sanathiel raised his hands, and in his claws, Luciano saw the fire of Pueblo Esperanza: flames consuming straw rooftops, shadows fleeing with children in arms, his own younger face watching the destruction from the hill.
—I'm not your creation —Sanathiel roared. His fur flared like icy blades, each strand crackling with arcane energy—. I'm your punishment.
Luciano stumbled backward and hit the altar. The runes burned through his robe, branding his back and reminding him of his oath to the demon. He wanted to scream the truth—that the pact had been to save the seven-year-old boy sobbing between his parents' corpses.But the mist pouring from Sanathiel's mouth now smelled of gunpowder and charred flesh, just like that night.
—Stop! —Luciano's voice cracked as a claw slashed his chest, leaving three oozing trails of thick, black liquid—. You don't know what you're unleashing...
Sanathiel pinned him against the altar.His golden eyes turned into wells of white light, and at their center, Luciano saw the gears of an ancient mechanism turning.The Ritual of the Three Suns.The true reason behind the pact.
—Look —Sanathiel hissed, forcing him to see the vision—. You taught me how to lie. The demon taught me how to unearth them.
The mist solidified into figures: Luciano kneeling before the altar decades ago, drinking from a chalice filled with liquid shadow, while the lifeless body of little Sanathiel lay at his feet.
—It was the only way to save you! —Luciano shouted, but his plea died into a choking gasp as the claws closed around his throat.
A sharp whistle cut the air.Noah appeared from nowhere, plunging his obsidian dagger into Sanathiel's side. The blade hissed on contact with the moon-white fur.
—How quick's the end, little brother? —The vampire grinned, his fangs blackened like tar—. The Master wants his drama in three acts.
Sanathiel hurled Luciano against a pine tree.The snap of branches mingled with the sound of the medallion shattering on a rock—like the past itself breaking. For a heartbeat, both stared at the silver wolf rolling in the dirty snow.
It was all Noah needed. His fingers dug into Sanathiel's wound, pulling out glowing veins that twisted like puppet strings.
—Run, old man —he spat toward Luciano, bloodshot eyes locked on the white wolf—. Your son and I have a scene to rehearse. And this time, there's no happy ending.
As Luciano dragged himself out of the clearing, the last image he caught was Sanathiel howling—not to the moon, but to the broken medallion.The cracks in the silver etched forbidden constellations—ones only the Kerens could read.
In the depths of the forest, something answered that howl.Something older than pacts, hungrier than demons.
It roared, guttural—a beast turning into a man.
—Until the darkness fades —an ancient voice whispered among the trees.
Silence fell like a blade.From the shadows, a figure watched, its smile barely visible in the gloom.
—It's time to begin the first act.