The first warning came as a shiver in the stone.
Not a crack.
Not yet.
Just a low, almost curious tremor that ran up through Luna's bare feet as she crossed the main hall, the bundle of old scrolls still tucked under her arm.
She stopped.
The hum of conversation around her blurred.
The den's heartbeat—once a distant thrum she barely noticed—pulsed sharp and insistent.
Something is coming.
Her wolf lifted its head.
Hackles bristled along her spine.
"Luna?" Elia's voice cut through the din. "You feel that?"
Luna turned.
The healer stood near the nursery arch, hands full of linen, eyes narrowed, every line of her body gone alert.
"Yes," Luna said.
The tremor came again.
Longer, this time.
Not from beneath, like the curse.
From outside.
Through the ground.
Dozens, maybe hundreds, of paws, pounding earth.
Her heart lurched.
"Rogues," she breathed.
Not the scattered, desperate kind that had always haunted the edges of pack lands.
This felt like a wave.
"What is it?" Maera demanded, appearing at the top of the short stair from the council chamber, robes hitched in one hand.
Luna did not waste time softening it.
"An army," she said. "Rogues. Many."
Maera's face went pale beneath the smudges of age.
"How many?" Orion's voice came from behind Luna.
He was already moving, buckling on leather, fingers swift and sure.
Luna closed her eyes for a瞬, letting the stone's vibration map the world outside.
The den's walls.
The forest.
The border.
There—like a dark, shifting mass pressed against the edges of her awareness.
"Too many to count in a breath," she said. "Dozens. Scores. More coming behind. It feels like... like the Rogue Lands themselves are moving."
Rebel swore under his breath.
Rhea's eyes flared, then hardened.
"Sound the alarm," Orion snapped.
A horn call split the air, shrill and urgent.
Wolves froze mid-step, then exploded into motion.
Warriors grabbed weapons.
Omegas herded pups and elders toward the inner dens.
The den's hum turned from idle to frantic in one breath.
Luna shoved the scroll bundle into Elia's hands.
"Keep these safe," she said. "If the worst happens, they do not burn with us."
Elia's eyes flashed.
"The worst is not happening today," she said. "Go. I will see them in the deep cells."
Luna nodded once and turned toward the gate, power already stirring under her skin like waking lightning.
Rhea fell into step beside her.
Rebel flanked the other side.
"You sure this is not just your new bloodline trying to shake loose?" Rebel quipped, thin and sharp.
Luna's lips pressed into a line.
"I would prefer that," she said. "This feels uglier."
By the time they reached the outer yard, the tremor had become a drum.
The walls vibrated with it.
Warriors poured into position along the parapets and at the gate, bows strung, spears raised, claws half-bared.
The rain had thinned to a mist that clung to fur and leather.
The sky hung low and grey, pressing the world in.
Luna climbed the stone steps two at a time and stepped onto the wall.
What she saw beyond it made her breath catch.
Rogues.
Everywhere.
They filled the tree line, a dark, shifting mass of fur and eyes and bared teeth. Some half-shifted, some on four paws, some crude armor strapped across their shoulders. Scavenged gear from a dozen packs. Scars. Tattoos. Faces she recognized from the Rogue Lands, and many she did not.
They were not the desperate, scattered loners she had once evaded between brambles and broken roots.
They were organized.
Ranks.
Formations.
And behind them, further back in the trees, she could feel more.
Waiting.
Watching.
At the forefront, a massive wolf in full shift paced back and forth, fur mottled, one ear torn, eyes the flat, cold yellow of a predator who no longer remembered what mercy felt like.
He threw back his head and howled.
The sound rolled over the walls like a physical force.
Wolves on the parapets flinched.
Some dropped their gazes.
The Alpha of rogues.
Or something like it.
Orion stepped up beside Luna on the wall, his presence steady and hot at her shoulder.
He looked down at the swelling tide of bodies.
Jaw clenched.
"This is no border raid," he said.
"No," Luna agreed. "This is an uprising."
A challenge answered by a hundred throats.
Moonshadow, once the pack others whispered about in fear or envy, now faced the judgment of those it had rejected, driven out, left to fend for themselves in the cold.
"Do you know him?" Orion asked.
Luna narrowed her eyes at the lead rogue.
His scent hit her a breath later.
Smoke.
Rust.
Old blood.
She did not know him.
Not personally.
But she knew what had made him.
"Not that one," she said softly. "But I know the kind. Cast out by packs who wanted to forget their inconvenient wolves. Too strong. Too wild. Too poor. Too cursed. They band together or die alone. Looks like they chose the first."
The lead rogue shifted up onto two legs, the change cracking across his bones.
He stood naked in the rain, unashamed, muscle and scars and hate.
"Moonshadow!" he roared.
His voice rattled the stones.
Whispers skittered along the parapets as wolves flinched at hearing their pack name in that mouth.
"I am Varric!" he bellowed. "Alpha of the Broken! Speaker for the Cast-Out! You know our faces. You know our names. You hung us for your cracks. You drove us from your beds when we did not fit your stories. Today, we collect what you owe."
A ripple went through the rogues at his back.
Some snarled.
Some howled.
Some just stood, eyes glassy with old hurt turned hard.
Luna's gut twisted.
She thought of the five unnamed rogues whose necks had snapped under Moonshadow's rope, blamed for a curse Selene had helped bury.
She tasted ash.
Orion's fingers twitched on the stone.
"I have to answer," he said.
Luna nodded.
"This is your wall," she said. "Your den."
He stepped forward.
His voice, when it rang out, carried the weight of the Alpha bond.
"I am Orion," he called. "Alpha of Moonshadow. We have wronged rogues in the past. We have cast out wolves we should have helped. I do not deny that. But this?" He gestured to the massed army. "This will not mend it. It will only make more graves."
Varric laughed, harsh and sharp.
"Graves are all we have ever had from you," he said. "You think pretty words about 'mistakes' and 'regret' mean anything to those of us who watched our pups freeze in snow you would not let them cross? Who watched our mates hang to calm your curses?"
His gaze slid up the wall.
Locked on Luna.
"And you," he sneered. "Little goddess. Storm-girl. The runt who ran away and came back with a crown. I remember you. Not your face. Your smell. Desperation and hunger. You walked our woods once, before the Moon kissed you. Did you think you would not have to answer for the blood you walk on?"
Luna's breath hitched.
Memories flashed.
Rogue camps in the shadows.
Hollow-eyed wolves watching her as she skirted their fires, too wary to share, too proud to beg.
She had helped some.
Avoided others.
Survived.
"I owe you nothing," she called back, forcing her voice steady. "I did not hang your kin. I did not tighten the borders or speak the orders that cast you out. I was one of you. Left behind. I bled on these stones because of what they did to me."
Varric's lip curled.
"And yet you stand on their wall now," he said. "You carry their scent. Their Alpha at your shoulder. Their Goddess on your skin. You chose them. That makes you theirs. And theirs owe."
The logic was brutal.
Simple.
True.
Luna's chest burned.
"Then hear me as one of them and one of you," she shouted. "If you tear this den down, you will not just kill the ones who hurt you. You will kill pups who never learned to draw those lines. You will break omegas who have only ever been stepped on. You will turn your justified rage into slaughter. Is that what you want your story to be? Just another pack too proud to choose anything but blood?"
Some of the rogues shifted uncomfortably.
Others snarled louder.
Varric's eyes narrowed.
"The only story we have from you is blood," he said. "You did not come to us with open hands when we were starving. You came with spears when we crossed a scent-line we could not even smell. Do not preach mercy from behind your high wall."
His gaze flicked past her.
Toward the den roofs.
"You think we did not notice," he went on, "when the curse came for you? When your stone cracked? When your pups choked on air that turned wrong in their throats? We saw the smoke. We heard the screams. Some of us almost pitied you."
He bared his teeth.
"Then we remembered our dead," he said. "And we remembered that when our dens cracked, you did not come."
The words landed heavy.
Guilt surged in Luna's chest.
She did not have to stretch far to see the truth in them.
Moonshadow had not been kind to rogues.
Few packs were.
The Goddess' voice brushed her mind, cool and sharp.
*This is the debt you are paying,* She said. *Not just your own hurt. The hurt your pack has sent into the wild for seasons. Do not expect them to lay it down because you ask nicely.*
"I am not," Luna murmured under her breath.
To Varric, she said, louder, "What do you want? If not mercy. If not talk."
His answer was simple.
"Everything," he said. "Your food. Your stone. Your den. Your lives. Or the chance to carve our names into your bones."
A low growl ran along the parapets at that.
Rhea's hand brushed Luna's elbow.
"Talking time is almost over," she muttered.
Luna nodded once.
Her wolf pressed against her skin.
Teeth bared.
"Then know this," Luna called. "I understand your rage. I carry my own. But I will not let you make Moonshadow's mistakes in reverse. You chose to come here as an army. You chose to threaten pups and elders and omegas. I cannot let you past this wall."
Her voice dropped.
"You will not walk through this gate," she said. "Not while I stand."
Varric's laugh was wild now.
"You think your tricks will stop us?" he shouted. "We have seen your storms. We have watched you light up the sky and call yourself savior. Your power could have changed the Rogue Lands. You chose to use it here instead. You chose a side. We are choosing ours."
He lifted his arm.
Howled.
The rogue army surged forward.
They did not hesitate.
Did not test.
They came like a flood.
Snarls.
Howls.
The thud of hundreds of paws.
Mud flew.
The world narrowed.
Luna's heart slammed into a new rhythm.
Battle.
"Archers!" Orion barked. "Loose on my mark!"
Wolves along the parapets drew.
Strung.
Aimed.
Luna glanced down the line.
Some hands shook.
Some were rock-steady.
She drew a breath so deep it hurt.
Then let the storm inside her reach.
The sky answered.
Clouds darkened.
Not the lazy grey of earlier.
Dense.
Heavy.
She raised her hands.
Wind, already restless from the approaching tide of bodies, whipped into a sharper spin around her fingers.
"Do not kill what you do not have to," she murmured to the air.
It did not promise.
But it listened.
Thunder rumbled, low and distant.
"Now!" Orion shouted.
Arrows flew.
A dark, hissing cloud of fletching.
They arced over the wall and fell into the front ranks of the charging rogues.
Wolves dropped.
Some howled.
Some did not rise.
Still, the others came.
Luna's chest clenched.
She flung her hands outward.
Air slammed down like an invisible wall just before the physical one.
The front line of rogues hit it as if they had run into stone.
Bodies tumbled.
Snarls turned to yelps as they piled into each other.
The impact reverberated up Luna's arms.
It would have been easy to push, there.
To turn the air blade-sharp and let it scythe through the ranks.
End dozens of lives in a heartbeat.
Her power surged, eager.
She leashed it.
Not like that.
Not unless there was no other choice.
"Hold!" she called through gritted teeth.
Her muscles trembled.
Sweat beaded at her temples.
Wind screamed around the wall, ripping at hair and cloaks.
The rogues regrouped.
Those who had fallen scrambled to their feet, eyes wild.
Those behind pressed forward, bottlenecked by the unseen barrier.
Varric snarled.
"See?" he shouted to his own. "Even now, they cage us. Even now, they pull their power up like a wall. Break it!"
He threw himself at the barrier.
His body slammed into the compressed air with a thud that made Luna's teeth ring.
He slid down, panting.
Then he grinned.
And drew in his own breath.
Luna felt it before she saw it.
Magic.
But wrong.
Twisted.
Not Goddess-given.
Not like hers.
Like a thing learned too late, half-understood, fed on scraps of curses.
Varric exhaled.
A wave of... rot rolled out of him, invisible but unmistakable.
The air itself seemed to sour.
Where it hit her barrier, Luna's control faltered.
Pressure buckled.
The wall of wind shuddered.
Cracked.
The rogues slammed through the weak point with a triumphant roar.
They hit the physical wall like a tide.
Claws scrabbled.
Bodies smashed into stone, trying to climb, to scramble, to find purchase in old cracks.
"Ladders!" Rhea shouted.
Behind the first waves, rogues lugged crude wooden ladders forward, shoving them up against the walls, anchoring them with bodies and will.
Warriors along the parapets shifted half-form, claws sprouting, teeth lengthening.
"Steel close!" Orion roared. "Archers, fall back! Blades to the gaps! Do not let them over!"
The battle dissolved into chaos.
Rogues climbed.
Wolves hacked at hands.
Arrows flew at close range.
Snarls and screams melded into one endless, ragged sound.
Luna planted her feet and reached again.
Not with blunt force this time.
With precision.
She called to the water still clinging to stone from the earlier rain.
It answered.
Beads of moisture swelled, ran, gathered.
She flicked her fingers.
The stone under the ladders slicked suddenly.
Mud thickened into a treacherous, sucking quagmire.
Ladders wobbled.
Rogues lost their footing, sliding backward in cascades of limbs and curses.
A few made it over anyway.
One vaulted the parapet near Luna, eyes wild, teeth bared.
He came at her with a knife scavenged from some poor dead soldier, point aimed at her throat.
Luna twisted.
The blade sliced a line of fire across her shoulder instead of her jugular.
She grabbed his wrist.
Electricity flared under her skin, racing into his.
His body spasmed.
He crumpled.
Guilt flashed through her, sharp and immediate.
No time.
Another rogue lunged.
Rhea intercepted him, blade flashing, the two of them crashing into each other in a tangle of fur and steel.
Everywhere, movement.
A rogue she recognized—a gaunt she-wolf who had once shared a scrap of fire with her in the Rogue Lands—locked eyes with Luna across the chaos.
Recognition.
Accusation.
Pain.
Then a warrior's blade took her from the side and she fell, expression frozen in that single stunned instant.
Luna's stomach lurched.
She almost missed the next attack.
A massive male came over the wall like a boulder, crashing into Rebel.
They rolled.
Teeth snapped.
Blood sprayed.
"Enough!" Luna snarled.
She flung her hand out.
Wind slammed sideways.
Rogues and warriors alike were shoved apart, skidding along the parapet.
The stones groaned under the force, but held.
For now.
Varric, below, laughed again.
"You cannot save them all, storm-girl!" he taunted. "Either you let us in, or you burn us where we stand. Which will it be?"
He had found her line.
Mercy.
Force.
She could not hold this balance forever.
Already her arms shook, every muscle quivering with the effort of pushing and pulling, of being precise where brute strength would have been easier.
The Goddess' voice slid through the din, low and steady.
*You cannot fix everything with a soft hand,* She said. *Sometimes you must choose which lives you can bear to save—and which scars you can live with afterward.*
Luna's breath hitched.
"I will not become what they fear," she whispered fiercely.
*You already are,* the Moon replied. *The question is what you do with that fear.*
Below, more rogues poured forward.
They had numbers.
Desperation.
Righteous anger.
If they breached the gate, if they got into the inner yards, it would be slaughter.
For everyone.
Pack and rogue both.
Luna flung her awareness outward, beyond the immediate crush of bodies, into the forest.
There—the river that ran not far from Moonshadow's outer wall, swollen with rain.
She reached for it.
For its speed.
Its weight.
Its relentless, indifferent push.
Water answered.
It always did.
She called it higher.
Faster.
The current surged, straining its banks.
Roots drank deep, then choked.
Mud loosened.
"Luna," Orion's voice panted at her side. "Whatever you are doing, do it now or pull back. We are not going to hold them much longer like this."
She felt the truth of it in the stone.
Old cracks screamed.
New ones spidered.
Varric was right about one thing: she could not save everyone.
Not today.
But she could choose the shape of this battle.
She could choose whether it was a butcher's yard or something... less final.
"Flood," she whispered to the river. "Come."
Water roared.
Not a trickle.
Not a polite swelling.
A surge.
It tore free of its banks like a beast unleashed, crashing through undergrowth, uprooting small trees, dragging brush and stone in its wake.
The first rogues to hear it turned, confusion etched in their faces.
Then panic.
The wall shuddered as the flood hit the outer trench, overflowing it in a single, massive leap.
Water wrapped around the base of the wall, surged through the rogues' back ranks, slammed into their flanks.
Bodies tumbled.
Snarls turned to coughs as muzzles filled with dirty water.
"Hold!" Luna shouted to her own fighters. "Inside! Back from the edge!"
Some of Moonshadow's wolves stumbled away from the parapet, stunned, as the world below turned to churning brown chaos.
Rogues were swept off their feet, their advance shattered.
Ladders toppled.
Those already climbing clung desperately or fell, swallowed by the surging wave.
Luna forced the water's path, teeth gritted.
Not too high.
Not too hard.
She aimed it like a blunt blade, smashing into the attackers, driving them back, but not pinning them against stone where they would drown en masse.
"Back!" she howled, pouring the command into the Ground and the air alike. "Run, if you want to live! This is your chance!"
Some heard.
Some did not.
The flood did not care.
It pushed.
Varric roared in rage as the wave cut through his ranks, scattering them.
He dug his claws into the churned earth, muscles straining as the water tried to drag him.
"Coward!" he bellowed up at the wall. "Hiding behind tricks!"
Luna's vision narrowed.
Her arms were numb.
Her legs shook.
"Retreat," she shouted again, voice raw.
This time, more rogues listened.
They turned, stumbling, half-swimming, clawing their way back toward the tree line.
Others grabbed at them, snarling, some trying to pull them back into the fight.
The army that had moments before looked like an unstoppable, unified tide fractured.
Factions.
Those who would retreat.
Those who would die before taking one step back.
Varric was among the latter.
He fought the water like a demon, pushing forward inch by inch against the current, foam and filth slapping his chest, eyes fixed on Luna.
"You think this is over?" he screamed. "You think a little flood washes away seasons of what you did? We will come back! Again and again! Until your walls lie in ruins and your pups learn what it is to chew bone in the snow!"
His words hit Luna like thrown stones.
Her chest clenched.
Her control faltered a瞬.
The river tried to surge higher.
To drag more bodies under.
She caught it.
Just.
Turned its force sideways instead of down.
The water spilled around Varric at the last moment, slamming into the rogues behind him instead, driving them further from the wall.
"Enough!" she screamed back, power riding her voice. "Enough blood! Enough ghosts! I will not let you make more or let them pretend your hurt never happened. But I will not let you through this gate."
She thrust her hands out one last time.
The water obeyed.
It curved, like a great arm, sweeping across the field in a wide, relentless arc.
Rogues stumbled, slipped, were carried.
Some vanished into the trees.
Some clung to roots and rocks, snarling.
Varric, chest heaving, found his footing in the sucking mud.
He stood knee-deep in churned water, hair plastered to his skull, eyes burning.
He pointed a shaking finger at Luna.
"You have not seen the last of us, goddess," he spat. "We are not like your neat little pack enemies with their borders and treaties. We are what you made us. We do not stop."
He turned, finally, and fought his way back through the ragged remains of his army, driving those who would retreat, snarling at those who clung to the fight.
The flood's force ebbed.
Luna let it.
Her arms dropped to her sides, muscles protesting.
The river, called beyond its banks, grumbled as it slid back into its natural course, leaving behind a field of mud, debris, and bodies.
Silence fell, broken only by the groans of the injured and the distant crash of water still settling.
Moonshadow's wolves stood along the wall, chests heaving, eyes wide.
They had held.
Barely.
But the cost...
Luna swallowed hard against the copper tang of blood in the air.
"Report," Orion rasped, voice rough.
Warriors called out from different sections of the wall.
"Casualties on the east parapet."
"Three down at the gate, two not moving."
"Rhea is hurt but breathing."
"I am fine," Rhea snapped from nearby, one arm wrapped tight around her ribs, blood soaking her tunic.
Rebel spat pink-tinged saliva over the edge of the wall, nose crooked at a new angle.
"Rogues?" he asked, squinting down at the churned battlefield.
Luna forced herself to look.
Bodies lay scattered.
Some still moved, trying to crawl.
Others were very still.
More had been swept farther out into the trees, where the flood had broken and scattered.
"Many," she said quietly. "Alive. Many not."
Guilt and grim satisfaction twisted together in her gut.
"I did not want this," she whispered.
*War rarely cares what you want,* the Goddess murmured. *Only what you do.*
Orion's hand brushed her back, light, as if unsure of his right to touch.
"You saved us," he said hoarsely. "Again."
She flinched.
"At what cost?" she whispered.
He did not answer.
Did not lie.
Behind them, Maera's cane clicked on stone as she climbed the wall, Elia at her elbow.
The elder's face was ashen.
Her gaze swept the field outside.
"The Rogues," she said, the word thick with too many ghosts. "We have never seen them move like that."
"Pieces of packs we failed," Luna said, voice flat. "Given a leader. A cause."
Maera's mouth trembled.
"This is our past," she murmured. "Rising up to swallow us."
"Not yet," Luna said.
Her legs shook.
She forced them steady.
She could not fall here.
Not in front of them.
Not yet.
Elia's quick eyes flicked from Luna's pale face to the quivering of her fingers.
"Enough heroics," the healer snapped. "You are white as bone. Down. Now. Before you faint on my nice clean stones and give every pup here a new story to tire me with."
Luna managed a weak huff.
"Since when are your stones clean?" she muttered.
Elia's mouth quirked.
"Since I say they are," she said. "Move, girl."
Orion stepped closer.
"I will get reports," he said. "And see to the warriors. Go with Elia. Please."
Luna hesitated.
Every instinct screamed at her to stay on the wall, to watch, to guard against another wave.
The tremor in the stone had eased, though.
The immediate threat had broken.
For now.
Her power was a frayed rope inside her.
She nodded, finally.
"Do not make any promises to them without me," she said to Orion.
His eyes met hers.
"I will not," he said.
He sounded like he meant it.
Elia tugged Luna away, half-supporting, half-herding her down the steps.
The den's interior hummed with a new note now.
Fear.
Relief.
Anger.
Grief.
And underneath it, a low, uneasy awareness.
The rogues had not just tested their walls.
They had sent a message.
We are many.
We are organized.
We remember.
Luna could feel the weight of that in every flinch, every hurried whisper as she passed.
"A rogue army."
"They almost broke through."
"She flooded them like ants."
"Did you see Varric? The way he stood against the water?"
"Did you hear what he said? About what we did to them?"
Old guilt.
New fear.
The uprising had been beaten back, but it had cracked something.
Not in the stone this time.
In the story Moonshadow told itself about who it was and what it owed.
Luna let Elia steer her toward the healer's wing, her mind already racing ahead.
Varric's words.
His twisted magic.
The way the rogues had rallied to him.
This was not a one-time siege.
This was the first wave of something bigger.
The Rogue Lands had found their voice.
And it was coming for them.
"You cannot fight the whole wild," Elia muttered, as if reading her thoughts. "Even with your storms."
Luna sank onto a low bench as Elia fussed at her shoulder wound.
Blood had soaked her tunic.
She had not even noticed.
"I know," Luna said.
The Goddess' presence curled around her, low and steady.
*This is the cost of leadership,* She said. *Not just protecting your own from threats that come with clear teeth and claws. Facing the ones that come wearing your own sins.*
Luna closed her eyes.
She could still see Varric's face.
The flames that had flickered under his skin, twisted and wrong, like her own power reflected in a cracked mirror.
"How many more like him are out there?" she whispered.
*Enough,* the Moon replied, *that you cannot simply hold your wall and wait. The Rogue Lands are not an absence. They are a nation you helped create by rejecting its pieces.*
Luna let out a shuddering breath.
"I chose to stay," she murmured. "To build something better here. But I cannot only build inside these walls. Can I?"
*No,* the Goddess said gently. *You are storm and stone. Bridge and blade. The uprising you saw today is not the end. It is the beginning of the debt coming due. You can pay it in blood... or in change.*
Luna opened her eyes.
Her reflection stared back at her in the polished metal basin Elia had set by her knee.
Silver eyes.
Old power humming under thin, tired skin.
"Then we change," she said quietly. "Or we burn."
She thought of the scrolls pressed against her ribs.
The First line.
The runt who had once cracked stone.
The choice that pack had made—to cast her out.
She would not let Moonshadow make that choice again.
Not with her.
Not with the rogues.
Not when the cost of that fear was marching to their gate in muddy, furious waves.
Outside, the rain washed blood from the stones.
The field beyond the wall would hold new scars now.
So would she.
So would the pack.
The Rogue Uprising had begun.
And it would not end with a single flood.