Chapter 1: The Call of the Blood Moon
Thick with the sound of pine, wet moss, and something else... not of this world. The blood moon, portent of disaster, had started its slow ascent into the sky, the old forest drenched in its eerie scarlet light. Trees murmured, restless in skin and limb, and beneath their rustling canopies, there was a stirring in the shadows.
Riven Thornclaw, the Alpha of the Silverfang pack, knelt at the top of Moonstone Ledge, just around the curve of a valley as though a sleeping beast. His golden eyes were slits as the red-tinged moonlight bathed his ugly scarred face, revealing the jagged line from temple to jaw, one legacy from the battles he had fought and from being a ruler.
He exhaled, and his breath misted in the frigid air. The forest was pulsing, but there was a flaw in its rhythm.
"Something about tonight… is not right," he muttered, more to himself than the dark-skinned warrior behind him.
"Is it the Blood Moon?" in questioned his beta and best friend Michael Ken. The squat werewolf loomed beside him, straightening the iron-studded pauldron on his shoulder. "It's a rare cycle. Perhaps the forest is just unsettled."
"No." Riven's eyes hadn't moved off the horizon. "It's more than that. The balance has shifted. Something ancient stirs."
Deep amidst the roots of the forest, the pack's den buzzed with silent excitement. Fires crackled in stone-lined pits. Puppies were hushed by their dams. Elders drew near, their faces pressing close, murmuring ancient stories of blood moons and cursed nights. The walls of the den bore claw marks alongside runes that still hummed with a magic as old as the pack.
Riven made his way back to the common hall, not making any sound as he walked on the stone roads. As Alpha, his every move was observed — not in fear, but worship. He raised a hand. "Tonight, I need silence. The wind speaks. And what it says is... worrying."
Murmurs quieted. As protector and vessel of ancestral wisdom, Riven wasn't just a warrior — he was the forest's translator.
His affinity with nature – it ran deeper than most, borne of blood and of trial.
"Three nights ago," he told me, "a border patrol made out a figure at the edge of the Obsidian Marsh. Hooded. Unmarked by scent. It vanished before they could follow it."
"Is it a vampire scout, do you think?" Michael asked.
Riven's head shook violently, denying the scent that lingered within his nose. "No vampire smells of ash and bone, only death does." An eerie silence fell upon the group as all understood what necromancy could mean. From the back of the crowd, a voice rang out clear as glass. Eira Moonshade, the pack's seer, stared ahead with eyes white as new fallen snow. "The dead have risen and wish not to rest."
At that moment, a memory came to Riven so clearly it was as if he was again a boy. He saw himself kneeling under the boughs of the Ancestor Tree, a place of visions since childhood. There among the roots he meditated as was habit, and there the spirits of past spoke their warnings. And this time, as he walked through the dense forest under the blood red moon, he witnessed a scene that curdled his soul. Piles of mangled bodies were strewn about a clearing, their bones forming a macabre throne at its center.
Through the smoke rising from a smoldering fire sat a pale figure with eyes like cold obsidian pits, watching him intently.
"Riven, the dead will answer to the bone," her haunting voice echoed in his mind.
He awoke with a start, thrashing about as his heart thundered in his chest. Sweat-drenched and shaking, he turned to Eira and asked
"You've seen their grim visions as well, haven't you?"
She nodded. "The balance is cracking. And you, Riven Thornclaw, are the linchpin to repairing it—or shattering it."
"I didn't ask for that."
"Prophecy doesn't really care what you asked for."
Alone, in the dead of night, by the light of a torch and by instinct alone, Riven had slipped through the woods and found the Moonstone Shrine, an ancient altar. And there he laid his hand upon the cold stone and muttered in the language of long ago.
"Show me what lies ahead."
The stone pulsed. The blood moon above flickered.
And he saw:
— Silver-eyed vampire soaking in the fire.
— A necromancer who can reach into the earth to summon bones.
— A war between the moonlight and the shadow.
But most of all, he was afraid of himself — at the fangs and claws, the slick coat of gore not meant for his enemies, but his own pack.
Riven staggered back, one hand over his heart. The wind moaned once more, but now it had become like a name wafted among the trees.
"Thornclaw…"
The Blood Moon was more than a mere omen.
It was a summons.