Luna's decree hung in the air.
Choose or be erased.
The marked wolves continued their movements.
Alphas commanding.
Betas serving.
Omegas submitting.
Priests judging.
All locked into perfect hierarchy.
And we stood unmarked.
Undefined.
Beginning to fade.
Then something changed.
The marble beneath our feet began to glow.
Symbols appearing.
Circles forming.
One around me.
One around Astro.
One around Ori.
The glow emanated from deep within the stone—not surface light but something emerging from beneath, rising through layers of marble like bioluminescence in dark water. The circles were perfectly geometric, their edges sharp as razorblades, traced in light that hummed at a frequency felt more than heard. Heat radiated upward from the glowing symbols, creating visible distortion in the air, making the space inside each circle shimmer like summer asphalt.
The marked wolves stopped again.
Turned to watch.
This was significant somehow.
Important.
