The road to Ardent Keep was a scar that never healed.
Once paved in obsidian tiles, it now lay shattered beneath centuries of frost, each stone pulsing faintly with the magic that had slain his kin.
The air grew thin as Jrogathrax climbed, the scent of salt and ozone filling his throat.
Lightning bled through the clouds, illuminating the broken towers ahead the birthplace of his people's extinction.
The gates of the Keep still stood, fused to their hinges by the heat of a weapon that had burned brighter than the sun. Around them lay the bones of wolves , a thousand of them, white and gleaming, arranged by human hands into patterns that once formed wards. As the moonlight touched the remains, they whispered.
He paused, listening.
At first, it was only the wind in the hollows. Then, beneath it, the low hum of gears alien to the ruins, steady, deliberate. Something alive moved within the fortress.
He stepped forward.
The great doors groaned open as if pushed from the inside. Beyond lay a hall of iron and dust, its walls veined with faintly glowing veins of gold. In the center stood a figure wrapped in a cloak of tattered white.
The air around it shimmered with restrained power.
"Welcome, Moonbane," said a voice that carried the calm of the grave.
"I have waited through three centuries of night."
The figure lowered its hood.
A human face, gaunt, scarred, half-replaced by brass and crystal lenses, looked upon him. Its eyes glowed pale blue, mechanical and mournful.
"Do you remember me?" the voice asked.
Jrogathrax's growl rumbled through the hall.
"One of the priests," he said. "The ones who lit the sunfire."
"I was their Magister," the man replied. "And their prisoner since the day the fire fell.
They bound me to the heart of this place to watch the ash of my own sin."
As he spoke, the machinery in the walls awakened. Sigils flared; the floor trembled.
Above them, a circular device, vast as the moon itself began to turn, channeling light into a single beam that lanced down toward the center of the chamber.
"It was built to end you," the Magister said softly. "But it needs your blood to wake fully. The hunters below mean nothing if I complete the ritual."
Jrogathrax's breath came in deep, thunderous pulls. "Then you called me here to die."
"To choose," said the Magister. "The curse that keeps you walking can end. Your heart beats with the same fire that destroyed your kin. Let me draw it out, and both our kinds can rest."
The beast's eyes flared crimson. "Rest is for the forgotten," he snarled, stepping into the beam.
The light hissed against his skin, searing fur and flesh.
The Magister raised a hand, chanting words older than the Keep itself.
The ground split.
From the fractures rose specters of silver flame, shapes of wolves, translucent and howling.
They circled Jrogathrax, claws of light reaching for him, their mouths shaping his name as a curse and a plea. For an instant he faltered, torn between rage and recognition.
Then the ancient hunger surged. He leapt through the phantoms, driving one claw into the Magister's chest.
Sparks burst; blood and quicksilver mingled. The machinery shrieked.
"Fool," the dying man whispered. "You've set it free."
The ceiling cracked. The moonlight above blazed into a column of pure fire that tore through the tower, punching a wound in the clouds.
Jrogathrax staggered back as the beam engulfed the Magister's body. The voice that followed was not human it was the sound of the sunfire remembering its purpose.
He fled as the fortress began to collapse, stones melting, air turning to glass.
When he burst into the open night, the sky was bleeding a spiral of white and crimson flame rising from the ruins.
He looked back once. In the inferno, a shape moved vast, winged, and screaming. Something had awakened beneath Ardent Keep, something older than his curse.
Jrogathrax turned toward the dark forests below, his wounds smoking, his breath ragged. Behind him, the mountains burned like candles before the hollow moon.
He ran until the light dimmed.
End of Chapter III.