The next morning we trained, sparring circles
Filled the clearing. Wolves learned to fight together again, some hadn't shifted in weeks while others still carried battle scars like fresh wounds.
I moved through them correcting stances, offering quiet words.
I didn't bark orders because I didn't needed to.
They watched me with eyes that had seen too many false leaders and many broken promises.
But I wasn't offering safety I had only offered them a fight worth dying for.
That night as I bathed in the cold stream near the camp I felt it, the air changed and the trees went quite. Then I felt a hot sharp pain cutting through my chest.
I fell forward gasping as visions hit me all at once.
A battlefield soaked in blood, a wolf with silver fire dripping from her claws and eyes. It was Amalric's eyes but they weren't hers anymore.
They were empty, dead, glowing with something strange almost inhumane.
"Del!"
Veran appeared kneeling beside me as I gripped the dirt.
"She's alive," I choked out.
His eyes widened. "Amalric?"
I noodles."But she's not just herself anymore, something else grew inside her."
He helped me sit. "Deucalion?"
"No," I said. "Something older buried in the Moon Core."
The next morning a messenger arrived, a girl from the North with a bloodstained bag.
She collapsed at our border barely awake,
We then brought her to the fire and gave her water.
"Speak," Veran urged. "What did you see?"
The girl's voice was rough. "Deucalion's army isn't wolves anymore."
"What do you mean?"
Her eyes filled with fear. "He's turned them, those who surrendered they don't bleed right anymore and they don't shift right. It's like… like something has corrupted their souls."
My heart froze immediately.
"And Amalric?" I asked.
The girl swallowed hard.
"She walks with him but she doesn't speak or sleep,they call her the Ash Queen now."
The fire crackled, Veran muttered,
"He's using her as a weapon."
"No," I said slowly. "She's become the weapon."
We buried the girl near the camp, she never gave her name but I carved one into the stone for she was brave and I owed her that.
Later i stood at the ridge alone looking at the hills that led to Deucalion's territory. I heard footsteps behind me, it was Veran who joined me quietly.
"You know what comes next," he said.
"Yes," I replied. "We march."
He was silent for a moment then he said, "If this is the end i want you to know something."
I turned toward him my face blank.
"I never planned to fall for you," he said. "Not when I was sent to spy on you or when I first saw you in the snow."
I blinked. "Veran…"
"But I did and I still do."
He took my hand this time and I didn't pull away.
"Then stay beside me," I whispered. "Until the end."
"I will." He replied nooding.
At dawn we had assembled the Forgotten, over a hundred now, they were shifting and getting ready.
As i stepped forward to lead something moved in the wind, making a sound and something smelt like burnt ashes.
And then on the hill across from us figures appeared, hundreds of them. Some walked upright, some crawled.
And at the front Amalric stood dressed in white, her hair was longer while her eyes looked empty.
And on her head there was a crown of twisted moonstone and bone.
She raised one hand and without a word the sky turned black, not like night or storm.
This darkness was alive thick and heavy, the kind of dark that crawled under your skin whispering your worst fears into your bones.
Across the ridge they stood in silence, Deucalion's army. They were not wolves anymore, some still looked like men, others had bones sticking out from their skin like broken spears. Their eyes were pale and empty, no longer alive but not fully dead either.
And at the front was Amalric, her white dress looked like a burial clothes.
A crown of moonstone and bone rested crookedly on her head like it was part her skull. Her hair flowed like smoke and her eyes that was once filled with ambition and pain were now bottomless voids.
She didn't blink or breathe, she just stared at me.
And I knew she saw everything.
Veran growled beside me. "This isn't the girl you left in the Moon Core."
"She's not a girl anymore," I said softly. "She's what happens when power devours the soul."
I took a slow breath and stepped forward.
My army the Forgotten followed, forming ranks behind me. None of them spoke, every one of them had lost something to Deucalion war.
Now we stood with nothing left to fear.
"Amalric!"
I called out to her as my voice echoed through the valley.
No reply from her.
"Do you even remember your name?"
Still nothing, then Deucalion stepped forward grinning darkly.
"She remembers everything Delphine, especially you."
He pointed to her then he said.
"She remembers how you left her, how you let her fall and how you let the Moon choose you."
"She chose both of us," I said coldly. "But you twisted her."
Deucalion chuckled. "No she came willingly, She was waiting to be seen and I gave her what you couldn't."
"She was my sister!"
"And now she's your death."
Before I could move Amalric raised her hand, the twisted wolves dropped to all fours letting out a scream that scratched inside my head like claws on glass.
Then they charged all at once, the forest shook under their weight.
"Hold!" I shouted. "Wait for my call…"
But some of ours panicked, a few ran forward too soon.
The twisted wolves tore through them like paper.
Veran shouted, "They don't fight like wolves!"
"They're not," I gritted out through my teeth. "They're bound to her command."
I shifted mid-run fur ripping through my skin, my bones snapping into place.
Ash flickered from my paws, I lept hitting one midair knocking it aside