Light swallowed the world.
Then came silence deep, endless, and alive.
Arka found himself standing within a vast ocean of stars. The constellations moved like living beasts, forming shapes of dragons, phoenixes, and wolves so immense they stretched beyond the horizon.
He was floating, yet grounded by something ancient beneath his feet a layer of light that rippled like water but shimmered like glass.
"Where… is this?"
A voice answered, not the Star Wolf's, but something older.
"This is where the gods remember. Where their sins were buried beneath eternity."
Arka turned.
Before him stood a woman cloaked in starlight, her hair flowing like liquid gold, her eyes pale as dawn.
She was neither alive nor dead a memory given form.
✦ The Goddess of Creation
"I am Astraea," she said softly. "Mother of the first beasts and the keeper of the heavens."
Arka's breath caught. "You… you're a god?"
She smiled faintly. "Once. Until your ancestor devoured the sky."
Her hand rose, and the stars around them shifted.
Images formed a vision of a time before mortals, when gods ruled both earth and sky.
In those days, the world was one humans, beasts, and spirits lived beneath the same sun.
But the gods feared mortality, and so they created a race to bear their divine fragments: the Beastborn.
Among them rose one greater than the rest Fen'Rath, the Star Wolf King.
He was born to protect balance.
But as power consumed him, he turned his fangs against the gods themselves.
✦ The War of the Heavens
The scene shifted the sky turned crimson.
Armies of celestial beings clashed with beasts wreathed in starlight.
The sound was unbearable each roar could tear apart mountains, each strike split the heavens.
Arka saw it a single wolf, colossal, silver-furred, eyes glowing like twin moons, devouring constellations to grow stronger.
That was the first Star Wolf.
And chained before him, trembling yet radiant, was Astraea.
"He devoured my light," she whispered. "And with it, he devoured mercy itself."
"So the gods sealed him?"
"No. They sealed themselves."
Arka blinked. "What?"
The goddess turned to him, sorrow shadowing her divine face.
"The gods feared what they had made. To contain Fen'Rath, they bound their own divinity into the world turning themselves into the Seals you now bear."
Realization hit like thunder.
The Star, Sea, and Flame Seals they weren't sources of power.
They were bodies of gods, their essence sleeping inside him.
✦ The Burden of the Heir
"Then… I've been carrying their remains?"
"Their souls," Astraea corrected gently. "But their will still lingers."
Arka looked down at his hands. Silver and gold light pulsed beneath his skin the heartbeat of imprisoned gods.
"Then the curse… it's not a curse. It's their judgment."
"Yes," she said. "And when you open the final seal, their memories will become yours. You will become what Fen'Rath once was or something beyond."
Silence followed.
"I won't repeat his sin," Arka said firmly. "If they feared what he became, I'll show them what a Star Wolf truly can be."
Astraea smiled sad, but proud.
"Then go. The truth awaits you in the ruins of the First Moon."
Her form began to dissolve into light, scattering into the stars.
"Wait!" Arka reached out, but his hand passed through her fading glow.
"Remember, child of beast and god," her voice echoed faintly,
"You were never meant to destroy the heavens. You were meant to remake them."
✦ The Awakening of the Heir
The stars trembled.
A pulse of divine energy surged through Arka's veins, burning brighter than ever before.
Silver fur rippled briefly across his arms, and his eyes turned the color of eclipsed suns.
The wolf's voice returned older now, almost reverent.
"You have seen the truth."
Arka's voice trembled, but his resolve was iron.
"Then let the world come. I'll bear their sin and their hope."
The celestial ocean shattered into shards of light, and he fell back toward the mortal realm, toward the beginning of his true legend.