The first omen was the silence.
Not a silence born of peace, but the kind that stretches too long—too deep—like the world itself is bracing for something it can't name.
No wind stirred. No wolves howled. Even the rivers of Kaladorn ran slower that night, thick with the tension of prophecy.
The second omen was the dream.
Jonas bolted upright in his narrow cot, gasping as if he'd surfaced from drowning. His hands trembled. His breath came in ragged bursts. But there was no water, no fire. Just the darkness of a room too quiet for comfort and the distant echo of a voice he didn't recognize—yet heard night after night.
> "You are the fire forgotten…"
He ran his hands through his tangled hair, sweat slick across his brow. Another nightmare. The same one. The same throne of bone and ash. The same red moon, split like a cracked eye. Wolves. Always wolves. Watching him. Bowing to him. Bleeding for him.
He wasn't royalty. Not a soldier. Just a nameless orphan scraping by in the underbelly of a kingdom that had long stopped caring who starved and who ruled.
But his dreams were getting stronger.
And something inside him—something he couldn't explain—was starting to remember.
In the daylight, Kaladorn still gleamed. Spires of gold. Archways chiseled with myths. Flags bearing the serpent-wolf of House Kael fluttered above streets paved with rose-hued stone. But that beauty was a mask. A beautiful corpse in a borrowed crown.
The people whispered behind closed doors of blood curses, of missing children, and of wolves seen at the borders where wolves had not walked in generations.
And at the center of the rotting heart sat the Citadel—the marble beast that watched over them all.
Within it, the king lay dead.
And Prince Malik stood beside the body, eyes sharp as broken glass.
He did not mourn.
He studied.
As the last priest muttered rites over the dying embers of the king's ceremonial pyre, Malik stepped forward and unsheathed a dagger from his belt. He reached beneath the throne and drew out a sealed lockbox bound in runes and soot-dark iron.
The guards turned away.
They knew better than to ask.
Inside the box lay a single relic: a long, curved fang—darker than coal, etched in silver veins that pulsed faintly with an inner light. The old kings had called it blasphemy. The old priests had buried it beneath forty seals.
Malik called it a solution.
"This kingdom will not be saved by prayers," he muttered. "Only by fire."
Jonas stepped into the Cracked Fang Tavern with his head low, hood shadowing his face. It was one of the only places left in Kaladorn where people still paid for silence. No one here asked where you came from. Only what you were hiding from.
"Another rough night?" the barkeep asked, sliding a chipped mug of goat's milk across the counter.
Jonas shrugged. "It's always night in here."
"You're burning up again," she said. "You look like you swallowed lightning."
He gave a dry laugh, but deep down, he knew she was right. Something was changing. His skin felt tight. His heartbeat didn't match the rhythm of anyone around him. Sometimes he could hear whispers when no one was speaking. Smell fear before it had a name.
Sometimes… his reflection didn't match the way he felt inside.
He didn't tell her about the voice in the dreams. Or the eyes he'd begun to see in the corners of alleyways. He didn't tell her that once—just once—when he was cornered in a street fight, something had cracked beneath his ribs, and the boy who tried to stab him had run screaming from a shape that shouldn't have been his.
He didn't tell her he wasn't sure he was fully human anymore.
Far above the tavern, Prince Malik summoned his inner circle to the war chamber.
"I want every child born during the last eclipse tested," he ordered. "Every village questioned. Every glyph matched."
A general cleared his throat. "And what, exactly, are we looking for?"
Malik turned to the window, where a sliver of blood-moonlight spilled across the floor.
"We're looking for the one with Hollow blood," he said. "Before the prophecy finds him first."
That evening, Jonas wandered the Market of Whispers—a narrow stretch of crooked stalls and flickering lanterns tucked deep in Kaladorn's shadowed east.
He hadn't meant to come here. His feet led him before his mind caught up.
One stall caught his eye. A black veil hung across its entrance, and an old woman sat behind it with her face half-hidden beneath a bone-carved mask.
"You've seen the throne," she said before he opened his mouth.
Jonas froze. "What?"
"You dream of wolves. You feel the pull in your marrow. You stand on the edge of something old enough to remember your name."
"I don't know what you're talking about."
She laughed, hollow and dry. "But you do."
Jonas backed away.
But before he could flee, she whispered something else:
> "There's a girl. She waits at the Moonwell. Find her before the prince finds you."
He found the Moonwell before dawn—a ruined shrine now buried in ivy and neglect. It had once been where kings received their blessings. Now it was nothing but cracked stone and forgotten dust.
She was already there.
A girl. Tall, cloaked, silent.
She turned at the sound of his steps.
"Elena," she said simply. "You're later than I expected."
Jonas blinked. "Do I know you?"
"You do," she said. "Not with your mind. But your blood remembers."
Something in her voice sent a shiver down his spine.
He stared at her. "Why me?"
"Because you're the last of them," she whispered. "The last Fang."
Together they entered a hidden tunnel beneath the Moonwell—walls slick with damp, air thick with the weight of memory. Glyphs glowed faintly in the dark, whispering old names. Names Jonas didn't know, but somehow… understood.
As they moved deeper, carvings emerged on the stone: battles long erased, kingdoms that never made it into the books, and wolves—always wolves—standing upright like kings.
Jonas stopped at one.
It was he.
Or someone who looked like him. Standing atop a burning tower, with flames licking the heavens and a pack at his feet.
"What is this place?"
Elena's voice dropped.
"This is the truth they buried. And you're the reason they did."
Jonas backed away from the wall, heart pounding. "I don't want this. I didn't ask for it."
"No one ever does," she said. "But it's already in you. You can feel it, can't you? Something waking?"
Jonas swallowed.
Yes.
From deep within the chamber, a sound echoed.
Low. Throaty. Wrong.
Not from their steps.
Something else was moving.
The tunnel behind them began to close.
The torches flickered.
A second growl joined the first.
Elena stepped in front of him, drawing a blade from her belt—a short dagger carved from what looked like moonstone.
"We're not alone," she said.
Jonas turned slowly.
And from the dark tunnel behind them, red eyes began to open.
One pair. Then another.
And another.
And another.