Epilogue: Ashes and Dawn
The years passed like rivers through the forest. Seasons changed. Trees grew where blood had once soaked the soil. The old stone sanctuary collapsed into moss-covered ruin, its dark past buried beneath root and time.
The name Cain became legend.
In the taverns that clung to the edge of the wilds, hunters spoke in low voices of the Blood Moon Reckoning—the night the sky bled, and something ancient screamed from the mountains. They whispered of a man who walked like a ghost and fought like a god. Some said he died with the beast. Others claimed he was still out there, guarding the line between man and monster.
The packs splintered in the aftermath. Some reformed, peaceful and hidden. Others vanished entirely.
But not all traces of the First Wolf were gone.
A young boy—barefoot, wild-eyed—wandered into a northern village one winter, covered in snow and blood, muttering Cain's name. He had no family. No memory. But his eyes were silver, and his nightmares echoed with howls.
The elders took him in.
Raised him with stories.
Of the wolf who broke the curse.
Of the Alpha who refused the crown.
Of the Blood Moon that burned away the sins of the past and gave the world a new path.
But the boy wasn't like the others.
He heard the trees speak when the wind blew. He could smell the tension before storms. At night, he walked without fear into the woods and returned unharmed—sometimes not alone. Wolves watched him from the shadows. Not as prey. As kin.
One spring, he vanished for three nights.
When he returned, he wore the mark of the old moon across his shoulder, glowing faintly with silver light.
He did not speak of what he saw. But he walked taller.
He took no name, but the village began calling him Shade. It felt right.
And when Shade came of age, the wolves came with him.
Not in anger. Not in hunger.
In allegiance.
He led no pack. He took no territory. But he walked the land, settling old debts, breaking the chains of cursed dens and ancient blood oaths. He hunted those who clung to the old darkness—the fragments of the First Wolf that survived in hidden places.
Some nights, the blood moon still rose, glowing with menace. And when it did, Shade stood beneath it, unblinking, waiting.
And on one of those nights, far in the frozen north, he met a man.
A scarred man. Older, slower. But fierce still.
Cain.
They didn't speak much. Just sat by the fire.
Cain passed him a blade.
Shade passed him silence.
Then, without ceremony, they stood. Together. The old and the new. Hunter and heir.
Because in the end, the blood moon was never just a curse.
It was a reckoning.
And reckoning never truly ends.