The howls would not stop.
They stalked him through the night, circling unseen, sometimes fading to silence just long enough to let his heart slow—only to rise again, closer, sharper, fraying his nerves with every note.
Blaze pressed his back to the tree until bark dug into his skin through the ragged cloak. He clenched the useless dagger and tried not to breathe too loud. His lips were cracked, his stomach twisting from emptiness. Each sound of padded feet in the underbrush felt like the last thing he'd hear.
But morning came.
Pale light seeped between the trees, spilling long fingers of gray across the forest floor. Blaze's head lolled forward, his body numb from cold and exhaustion. Somehow, nothing had come for him. The forest was eerily still, as if it had been content to let him stew in fear all night.
When he forced himself to his feet, his legs trembled under him. His throat was so dry that swallowing hurt.
He staggered on.
---
Hours blurred together. The forest stretched endlessly, trees pressing close as if to squeeze the life from him. Once, he thought he heard water and veered off the pathless ground, but it was only the wind sighing through the branches.
By midday, dizziness threatened to drop him where he stood. His vision wavered, black edging into the corners of his sight. He tore the last strip of dried meat from his pouch, chewed until his jaw ached, but it did little but remind him of thirst.
When his foot caught on a root and he went sprawling face-first into the dirt, Blaze stayed down for a long moment, cheek pressed against the cold ground. His body screamed to give up. Just stop. Let the wolves take him, or hunger, or whatever this world decided.
But another voice, sharper, cut through the fog: *No. Not like this. Not after what they did.*
The nobles' laughter. The crystal's refusal to glow. Lucas's flame-sword blazing bright while he stood empty-handed.
Blaze forced himself up, one shaky hand after the other, until he was standing again. His breaths came ragged, but he moved. Step by step, dragging his body forward.
The howls rose again that night.
He didn't wait to find out how close they were. Instinct drove him deeper into the forest, stumbling, half-running. Branches clawed at his arms, tore at the cloak. His chest burned, his body ready to collapse, but the thought of teeth sinking into his flesh spurred him faster.
That was when the ground vanished beneath him.
---
The world tilted. His foot found no purchase. He pitched forward with a cry, hands grabbing desperately at anything. Roots tore against his palms, bark shredded his skin, and then he was tumbling, rolling down a steep incline.
His shoulder slammed into stone. Air blasted from his lungs. He rolled again, dirt and rock tearing at his skin, until at last his body slammed to a stop against something solid.
Blaze groaned, vision swimming. Pain radiated from everywhere at once. He sucked in shallow breaths, trying not to move too suddenly.
When his eyes adjusted, he realized he was lying at the bottom of a narrow ravine. Jagged walls rose on either side, climbing high into the trees above. Faint light bled down, but the canyon floor was cloaked in shadow.
Something about the place was wrong.
The air hung heavy, damp, carrying with it a faint metallic tang—like old blood. The silence pressed thicker here than anywhere he'd been.
Blaze pushed himself upright, wincing at the sting of cuts on his arms and face. His gaze swept across the canyon floor. At first he thought it was only scattered stone, but as his eyes adjusted, shapes emerged.
Pillars, toppled and half-buried. Walls carved from black stone, eroded with time but still bearing faint grooves that might have been letters. A shattered statue jutted from the earth, its face broken away, but the remnants of a crown still perched on its head.
*Ruins.*
The sight froze him in place. These weren't natural formations. Someone—long ago—had built something here.
Blaze's heart thudded in his chest. The sensation that pulled at him wasn't fear. It was… something else. Like a thread wrapping around his ribs, tugging him forward.
He stepped closer.
Every footfall echoed too loud. Dust stirred where he walked. The whisper of wind through the canyon shifted, almost like a voice, words too faint to grasp but insistent all the same.
He found himself before an archway half-collapsed with rubble. Darkness yawned beyond it. The tug in his chest grew stronger, like invisible fingers guiding him.
Blaze hesitated. His instincts screamed to turn back. But his hunger, his exhaustion, and the memory of humiliation drowned those instincts out.
He ducked under the broken arch and slipped inside.
---
The chamber beyond was vast, carved from the canyon itself. Pillars lined the hall, their surfaces etched with murals faded by centuries. As Blaze moved closer, he could just make out the shapes—armies kneeling in shadow, their faces turned toward a single figure on a throne.
The figure's features were vague, but the crown was not. And neither were the fangs, carved long and sharp, jutting from a cruel smile.
Blaze swallowed hard. The air here pressed against his skin, thick and suffocating. The whispers grew clearer. *Power. Strength. Survival.*
At the far end of the hall rose a pedestal. Unlike the crumbled stone around it, the pedestal was pristine, as though time itself had dared not touch it. Encased in a shell of blood-red crystal, something glimmered faintly.
Blaze stumbled closer, each step echoing like a drumbeat in the cavernous space.
Inside the crystal rested a ring.
Black metal, carved with twisting runes that pulsed faintly like veins under skin. The faint light it emitted wasn't like fire or glowstone—it throbbed in time with a heartbeat.
Blaze froze, throat tight. His instincts screamed again—*wrong, wrong, wrong.* But his body trembled with something else. Desire. Not desire for beauty, but for what the whispers promised.
He pressed a hand against the crystal's surface. Cold bit into his skin.
The crystal shattered.
No, it dissolved—hissing away into smoke that curled and vanished.
The ring clattered onto the pedestal.
Blaze's breath came fast, his chest heaving. The whispers pressed into his ears, clearer now, coiling like serpents. *Take it. Claim it. No more hunger. No more weakness. No more kneeling.*
He stared at the ring. His rational mind screamed to run, to leave it here. But his humiliation surged up, bitter and hot. He saw Lucas laughing in golden light. He saw nobles whispering "useless." He heard the guards sneer, *Don't bother coming back.*
Blaze's hand trembled as he reached out.
His fingers closed around cold metal.
The moment the ring slid onto his finger, the world convulsed.
Cold fire roared through his veins, stealing his breath. His knees buckled, his body arching as if invisible chains yanked him upright. His vision shattered into fragments—flashes of fangs sinking into flesh, rivers of scarlet spilling across marble floors, a throne towering above a world drenched in blood.
Voices screamed in his skull, thousands of whispers overlapping, chanting, begging, commanding.
Blaze gasped, clawing at his own hand as though to rip the ring off. But it had already tightened, fused against his skin as though it had always belonged there.
When at last the storm eased, Blaze collapsed against the cold stone floor. His breath came ragged, every muscle trembling with aftershocks.
And in the silence that followed, one voice lingered. Smooth. Seductive.
*Rise, child of shadows. The world cast you aside… but I will raise you up. Never again shall you kneel.*
Blaze's eyes snapped open. His heart thundered. The darkness around him no longer felt empty—it thrummed in time with his pulse.
The cursed ring gleamed faintly on his finger, and in its glow, Blaze felt the first stirrings of something inside him. Something sharp. Something hungry.