The dreams returned, thick with smoke and steel. In the twilight fog of sleep, the nameless warrior stood barefoot upon a rain-slick stone floor an ancient training circle where shadows of the past clashed and bled.
A voice gruff, old, yet familiar echoed through the darkness.
"Remember, lad. A Sūmgar does not fight for glory. He fights so others remember what they cannot."
A blade appeared in his hand. Heavy. Old. He moved with it instinctively, slashing through the silhouettes of monsters, men, and memory. When he awoke, the weight of that blade lingered in his fingers.
He opened his eyes to a knock at the door of the Black Boar Inn. The fire in the hearth had died to embers, and the scent of last night's ale still lingered in his breath. The innkeeper's young daughter peeked in.
"There's someone askin' for the hunter," she said. "They say it's about the Bram Bram Chowk."
That name stirred the air like frost. He stood and dressed quickly, buckling on his sword the one the blacksmith of Vanthaal had reforged from ancient Sūmgar steel. Still nameless, but now armed.
The villagers of Ghorwend were gathered in the square, their faces pale, eyes red-rimmed from sleepless nights. The elder stepped forward.
"It comes in the night," he rasped. "Carries fire on its head. Leads our children into the woods. Burned Haseen's hut to ash just last eve."
The hunter asked no questions. He only nodded. His sleep still hummed in his blood, reminding him of old teachings. Bram Bram Chowk was a tale mothers whispered to silence children. But tales, in Kasheer, had claws.
That night, the mist crept low across the earth like spilled milk. He waited just beyond the village, at the edge of the pine forest, where the trees leaned like watchers.
Then it came.
A low howl, then a flicker of orange light. The creature emerged, hunched and sinewy, with fur like scorched hide and a blazing torch growing from its forehead. Its eyes were not red, but white hot, like furnace glass.
It snarled. The torch flared.
He drew his blade. No war cries. No prayers. Only breath and steel.
Their battle cracked through the forest. The Bram Bram Chowk moved like smoke vanishing and reappearing in bursts of fire. It lunged. He rolled beneath its flame and slashed at its flank. Burned fur and blood.
"Ziraan!"
The word burst from his lips a Sūmgar rune of binding. The creature howled as the air thickened like tar. It slowed.
With a leap, he drove his blade deep beneath the creature's chin. The torch shattered like glass. The fire winked out.
Silence. The woods exhaled.
By dawn, the creature's corpse was ash, and the villagers found him waiting outside the inn, smoke curling from his blade.
"He has no name," someone whispered.
"He doesn't need one," said the elder. "He slew the fire wolf. Let him be called... Wolfsbane."
They said it again. And again.
Wolfsbane.
He didn't smile. But something in his chest stirred. Not memory not yet. But something close.
And in the quiet morning, the first song about him began to drift from the lips of a bard.