Lucien lifted his head and sniffed. The scent was faint, carried on a breeze that came from the east. It was not the seven-headed monster. That smell was foul, but it was a living foulness. This was different. This was old rot. The kind of decay that took years to develop. Mixed with it was the sharp, acrid smell of ash. Not wood ash. Something else. Something that had burned hot and long.

He turned his head slowly, scanning the forest. The trees on his left looked normal. Green. Alive. But the trees on his right were different. Their bark was blackened. Their branches were bare. They rose from the ground like the ribs of dead animals.

"Wanderers," Lucien muttered.

He reached into his cloak and pulled out a small brass disc. It was a location finder, a simple, magical tool. He held it flat on his palm and whispered a word. The disc grew warm. A line of light appeared on its surface, thin and silver, pointing north-west.

Zuri leaned over to look. "Where are we?"

"Hollowfen," Lucien said.

Zephyrion’s face went still. "Hollowfen’s Ruins. I have heard the name. I have never been here."

Lucien kicked his heels into his horse’s sides. The animal took two steps forward and then stopped. It stamped its front hoof and refused to move.

"They will not go further," Lucien said. He swung his leg over the saddle and dismounted. He tied the horse’s reins to a low branch. Zuri and Zephyrion did the same.

They walked forward on foot. The forest opened into a small clearing. In the center of the clearing, someone had arranged a large circle of charred bones. They were not animal bones. The femurs were too long. The skulls are too rounded. The bones had been painted with a dark, dried substance. Blood. Runes had been carved into the bones’ surfaces, the cuts deep and deliberate.

Lucien crouched at the edge of the circle. He did not step inside. He studied the nearest rune, tilting his head to see it in the dim light.

Zephyrion stayed back a few feet. He kept his hand on the hilt of his sword. "Is it safe to be that close?"

Lucien did not look up. "Do you know the history of Hollowfen?"

Zephyrion paused. He looked at Lucien’s face, then at Zuri’s. "Are you testing my intelligence on purpose?"

Lucien looked up. His expression was neutral. "Yes."

Zephyrion exhaled through his nose. "I feel insulted."

"Are you offended?"

"No," Zephyrion admitted. "But I still feel insulted."

Zuri stepped forward. She walked around the edge of the bone circle, her eyes on the ruined trees beyond. "I know the history," she said. "Decades ago, Hollowfen was one of the wealthiest packs in the realm. They controlled the trade routes through the eastern valleys. Their treasury was said to rival the kingdom’s own vaults. The Queen at the time tried to tax them, and Hollowfen refused. They paid no tithes. They answered to no summons. They acted as if they were their own kingdom."

She stopped walking. "My grandmother told me about it. She said their walls were lined with silver, and the roof was made of blue slate from the northern quarries. On feast days, they would roast whole oxen in the courtyard, and the smoke could be seen from three miles away."

Zephyrion crossed his arms. "Go on, storyteller."

Zuri rolled her eyes and placed her hands on her waist. "They were fine until the Wanderers happened. They came at dawn, not in secret. They walked up the main road with torches and swords, claiming that Hollowfen had been built on land that belonged to their ancestors. No one had ever heard this claim before. The Wanderers produced no maps. No documents. No witnesses. They said the land was theirs and that Hollowfen had one day to leave."

"And Hollowfen refused," Lucien added.

Zuri nodded. "They refused. The Wanderers waited until nightfall. Then they set fire to the forest on three sides. The wind carried the flames into Hollowfen. Families burned in their homes. Riders tried to escape through the eastern pass, but the Wanderers had blocked it with felled trees. By morning, the only things left standing were the stone foundations and the chimneys. Everything else was ash."

Lucien pointed to the bone circle. "The Wanderers held a ritual on this same spot afterward."

"They did it to make a point. To show that even the greatest pack could be brought to nothing if they defied the Witch Queen’s children." Zuri said.

Zephyrion looked at her for a long moment. "You know too much about werewolf history."

Zuri shrugged. "I am a fox, but that doesn’t mean I should not learn other histories."

"I know. But the way you talk about it. The details. I wonder sometimes if you are a wolf or a fox dressed in wolf fur."

Zuri smiled. "You would be surprised at what I know."

Lucien was no longer listening to them. He had picked up one of the bones from the circle. He held it close to his face. On the underside of the bone, carved into the marrow cavity, was a symbol. A serpent eating its own tail. The circle of the serpent’s body was endless—the Witch Queen’s mark.

He stood up and tossed the bone to Zephyrion. Zephyrion caught it one-handed without looking.

"The Wanderers held a ritual here recently," Lucien said.

He walked away from the circle toward one of the twisted, blackened trees. A sigil had been burned into the bark. It was not carved. It had grown into the wood itself, as if the tree had been forced to form the shape from the inside out. Magic.

Lucien placed both palms flat on the sigil. The bark was warm. He whispered three words in a language none of them understood. The sigil glowed pale orange for a moment, and Lucien’s eyes went white.

A vision slammed into his mind.

He was standing in a canyon of black rock. The sky above him was red, the color of infected blood. A creature was coiled on a ledge fifty feet above him. It had the body of a serpent thick as an old oak, covered in scales that shimmered like oil on water. But it had wings—two of them. The wings were not feathered. They were leathery, like a bat’s, stretched taut over bones that ended in hooked claws. The serpent’s head was flat and triangular. Its eyes were yellow with slitted pupils. When it opened its mouth, Lucien saw three rows of teeth. The teeth were not white. They were stained dark brown, the color of old wounds. The creature lifted its head and screamed. The sound was not a hiss. It was a human scream. A woman’s scream. Long and high and full of pain.

Lucien pulled his hands away from the sigil as if he had been burned. He stumbled backward. His breathing was fast. His palms were red and blistered.

Zuri was at his side in an instant. "What did you see?"

Zephyrion grabbed his shoulder. "Lucien. Talk to me."

Lucien looked at his hands. Then at the sigil. Then at them.

"Another monster," he said. His voice was hoarse. "A winged serpent. The old name for it was The Vyrmorn. It has awakened."

Zuri and Zephyrion exchanged a glance. Neither of them spoke.

Lucien straightened up. He forced his breathing to slow. He pulled his gloves from his belt and put them on over his blistered palms.

"The seven-headed monster is headed north. It is moving toward the Forbidden Mountains."

Zephyrion cursed quietly. "The Forbidden Mountains. The place where the first wolves were born. Or so the legends say."

"Legends or not, that is where it is going," Lucien said.

He turned to Zuri. "Burn the trees. All of them. The ones with the sigils. Burn them to the ground."

Zuri did not hesitate. She raised her right hand. A small flame appeared in her palm, blue at the base, yellow at the tip. She flicked her wrist. The flame jumped from her hand to the nearest marked tree. The bark caught immediately. The fire spread faster than natural flames should have. Within seconds, the tree was a pillar of fire. The heat pushed against their faces.

Zuri turned and threw three more flames. Three more trees ignited. The sigils on their trunks burned white for a moment and then crumbled into ash.

"Let’s go," Lucien said.

They walked back to their horses. Behind them, the fire grew. It jumped from tree to tree, the smoke rising into the grey sky. The heat was intense even from a distance. The horses whinnied and pulled at their reins.

Lucien untied his horse and mounted it in one motion. Zuri and Zephyrion did the same. They turned their horses away from the flames and kicked them into a canter.

None of them looked back at Hollowfen’s Ruins. There was nothing left to see. The Wanderers’ ritual ground burned behind them, and the smoke rose high into the air, a signal to anyone watching that someone had found what they had hidden.

Lucien leaned low over his horse’s neck and urged it faster. The Vyrmorn was out there. The seven-headed monster was heading north. And somewhere in Drakwyne, a woman wearing a crown sat on a throne that belonged to the Witch Queen.

The Vein of Awakening was cracking open. The realm was in danger.