The world roared with the clangor of blades and the crash of armored boots as dawn spilled over the Vale. Smoke curled like dying prayers into the pale sky, and the banners of Frostfang, newly stitched and battle-hardened, fluttered against a bitter wind.
Rowena moved through the chaos like a revenant of rage, her twin blades slicing through armored men who dared block her path. Each kill was a prayer for Aldric's freedom, and she whispered his name every time steel met flesh.
"Aldric," she rasped, cutting down a soldier whose crest bore the White Lady's serpent sigil. "Aldric."
All around her, the old wolves fought like the gods had risen inside their bones. Brannoc Stonewolf led the charge at the front, eyes burning like a winter bonfire, crushing enemies with hammer-swings that cracked shields in half.
Even the children of the Frostfang villages — who had grown up hearing songs of the Crescent Wolf — hurled stones, stabbed with pitchforks, or set fire to enemy tents. Rage had become their bond, a language as old as their bloodline.
The White Lady's forces answered in kind, cold and methodical, wearing iron-gray masks that hid all trace of humanity. Their arrows fell in sheets like bitter rain, their blades sang a cruel music.
But for all their discipline, they were afraid. Because from the enemy's front line came a horror they had never dreamed: a wolf turned on its own kin.
Aldric, the Hallowed Fang
He moved like a storm given flesh, the black symbols on his stolen armor flickering in the pale morning light. His eyes glowed with a vacant, unnatural fire, as if he were a puppet half-aware of its own strings.
Every slash of his blade was heartbreak. He cut through Frostfang soldiers who had once trained with him as boys, who had shared bread at his father's hearth. He had no memories of them now, no voice telling him to stop — only a pounding command in his skull:
Kill them all.
Somewhere, far below the poison and the fog, a spark of memory burned — tiny, desperate, refusing to die. It was Rowena's voice, echoing from that battlefield, It's me, Aldric!
That echo made him hesitate each time he saw a flash of green eyes, or smelled the faint scent of pine soap from childhood baths in the fortress. But the White Lady's grip always pulled him back.
Obey, she hissed, her presence clawing through him like black iron.
He obeyed.
Rowena's Charge
A horn blast split the morning, signaling the advance of Brannoc's rearguard. Rowena leapt over the fallen, eyes fixed on Aldric's towering silhouette among the enemy ranks.
If she could reach him, if she could touch him, maybe she could pull him from that abyss.
She ducked under a spear thrust, cut the attacker's wrist clean through, and raced forward. Each heartbeat rang in her skull:
Find him.
Save him.
Bring him home.
Brannoc was close behind, roaring like a wounded god. "WOLVES OF THE FROST! TO ME!"
Their war cry rose so loud it rattled the ancient stones, a chorus of agony and hope:
"FROSTFANG!"
The Field Splits
Aldric turned at the cry, recognizing that word even through the poisons. Frostfang.
His father's name.
His mother's lullaby.
Something snapped in his mind — a crack in the cage — and for a single heartbeat he could feel everything: the taste of fresh bread, the warmth of wolf pelts on a cold night, the scent of pine and steel and clean snow.
He fell to one knee, clutching his head, howling.
The White Lady's scream slammed into him through the mind-bond, shaking his bones.
No, my hound! RISE!
His body jerked like a marionette, forced to stand, to raise his blade again. But tears streamed down his cheeks, blurring the Frostfang banners as they charged him.
Brannoc's Stand
Brannoc saw Aldric falter and took his chance. He slammed through the front lines, swinging his warhammer with unstoppable fury, until he was close enough to shout.
"Aldric! You are your father's son! You are ours!"
The boy — no, the man who was their heir — stared blankly, eyes fighting between rage and horror.
Rowena skidded to Brannoc's side. "Let me through!" she pleaded.
Brannoc nodded, giving her space, covering her flanks as arrows sliced past.
Rowena dropped her blades and held out her empty hands, voice breaking.
"Aldric Frostfang!"
He hesitated.
Obey, the White Lady screamed in his head.
Rowena stepped forward, fearless, voice steady: "I will stand here until you kill me, if that is what you must do — but remember this: you loved me. You loved us."
The White Lady's rage roared in Aldric's skull, claws raking across his soul.
Rowena took another step. "If there is anything left of you, Aldric Frostfang, you will not strike me down."
He raised his sword, shaking, the runes on the blade pulsing with corrupted power.
Rowena did not move.
"Do it," she whispered, tears streaming. "Or remember."
The Mind-Break
Deep inside, Aldric fell through a black sea of memories. Fragments twisted around him: his father's final words, his mother's lullaby, the night Rowena kissed him under a broken moon.
Remember.
The word echoed like a war-drum.
The White Lady's shadow stood before him in that dreamscape, holding chains made of moonlight turned black.
"You are mine," she hissed.
Aldric reached out — and shattered the chains with a howl that cracked the false world apart.
The Real World
His sword clattered to the ground.
Aldric dropped to his knees before Rowena, eyes streaming with silver tears. The black runes burned away in blue fire, leaving only the Crescent Wolf sigil on his chest, whole once more.
He was free.
Rowena collapsed against him, sobbing. "Aldric!"
He wrapped his arms around her, and for a moment, nothing else mattered.
The Battle Resumes
Brannoc rallied the Frostfang ranks around their Alpha reborn. "HE STANDS WITH US!" he roared, and the wolves answered with a cry that shook the mountains.
The White Lady's soldiers faltered, confused and afraid.
Aldric rose, sword blazing with new power, eyes the color of a winter dawn.
"For Frostfang," he said, voice low, steady, unbreakable.
Then he charged.
After the Battle
Night fell like a blessing. The Vale burned in places, and the air stank of ash and wet earth. Crows circled over the bodies, picking out the dead.
Aldric stood on a ruined parapet, bandaged and bruised, looking down at what was left of the White Lady's forces.
They had retreated into the Drowned Vale, tails between their legs.
Rowena approached, face half-hidden behind soot and tears. "You came back," she whispered.
Aldric reached for her hand, holding it as if it might vanish. "I tried," he confessed. "She had me so deep I thought I would never remember."
She squeezed his fingers. "We will always remind you."
Council of the Wolves
In the battered halls of Blackspire, a war council gathered, with Brannoc and the surviving elders. The hall had been cleaned of bodies, though the smell of old blood still clung to the stones.
Brannoc stood first. "The White Lady will not stop. She will raise another army."
Aldric nodded, jaw set. "Then we hunt her down before she finishes."
Rowena laid out a map on the scorched oak table. "Her stronghold is hidden in the Drowned Vale. Few can cross those lands — it is said the water itself drowns the mind."
Aldric's lips tightened. "Then we will find a way."
Brannoc frowned. "You barely survived her once. She will try to reclaim you."
Aldric's eyes flashed with a wolfish, defiant light. "Let her try."
Rowena studied his face, seeing the hard-earned scars, the half-healed gash on his neck, the exhaustion he carried like armor.
"You don't have to do this alone," she told him.
He nodded, grateful, though part of him already felt that quiet burden that only an Alpha could bear.
Nightfall: Private Moments
After the council, Aldric slipped away from the crowded hall and climbed to the highest tower of Blackspire. The wind whipped at his hair, cold and biting, but it was a reminder he was alive.
Rowena followed.
They stood together, side by side, as the stars revealed themselves one by one.
She leaned against him, head on his shoulder. "Do you ever think," she asked softly, "that we might have been farmers? Or teachers? Or even healers?"
He smiled, a quiet, broken smile. "Sometimes," he admitted. "But this is what we were born for, isn't it?"
She closed her eyes. "Maybe. But when this is done, I want a quiet life. I want... us."
Aldric kissed her temple, the taste of salt and tears sharp and human. "When this is done," he promised, "you will have it."
The Prophecy Returns
As they stood in silence, a faint breeze carried a voice that seemed not quite real, like a child's whisper:
The moon will break.
The wolf will bleed.
The world will burn.
Aldric's heart froze. He turned, searching the dark.
Rowena looked up at him, eyes worried. "What is it?"
"Nothing," he lied, though a chill ran down his spine.
Because he knew. The White Lady was not finished.
And neither was the prophecy.