POV: Wolf Elder Kaelor
The Moonveil Citadel had not trembled in centuries.
Yet tonight… the stones vibrated.
A faint, pulsing thrum, like an old wound reopening—rolled through the marble floors and into Elder Kaelor's bones. He lifted his head slowly, eyes narrowing as the torches along the walls flickered in unison.
Not wind.
Not magic.
Something blood-born.
The ancient kind.
Around the circular table, the other Wolf Elders lifted their gazes, ears twitching, pupils slitting into sharp amber lines. Even those long past shifting felt the instinctive prickle of danger.
A howl echoed from somewhere in the Citadel—cut off too abruptly to be natural.
Kaelor rose to his full height.
"It has awakened," he murmured.
Elder Rhyssa snarled. "Not possible. The seal was absolute."
"It should have been," Kaelor replied. "And yet the earth disagrees."
A gust of icy breath swept across the council hall as Elder Voric slammed his staff against the stone.
"This disturbance carries hybrid scent."
Murmurs rippled.
Hybrid.
A cursed word in their hall.
"Alistair," Rhyssa hissed. "It must be him."
Kaelor remained silent.
For decades, Alistair had walked the thin line between tolerated and hunted. Too powerful to eliminate without consequence. Too valuable to lose entirely. Too unpredictable to trust.
But this—
This tremor in the ley-lines wasn't just hybrid magic.
It carried starlight.
And prophecy.
Kaelor stepped to the edge of the table, claws tapping lightly against the carved lunar patterns. "No hybrid alone can cause a rift in the Moonveil wards."
"Unless," Voric growled, "he found something. Or worse… someone."
The chamber darkened as a cloud slid across the moon overhead.
Rhyssa leaned forward, voice a low snarl.
"He has always been unstable. Half of one world, half of another. Neither loyal. Neither tame."
Kaelor met her gaze.
"He has never broken the Veil."
"Until now!"
Silence dropped like a blade.
From the far end of the hall, a young scout stumbled in—breathing hard, chest heaving, fur half-shifted with panic.
"Elders," he gasped, bowing. "A flare—near Valeries City. Magic we cannot identify. But it—"
He swallowed.
"It carried hybrid energy… and something older."
Kaelor's pulse tightened.
Older.
Much older.
Rhyssa slammed a fist into the table. "He threatens the balance. We should have ended him decades ago!"
"No," Kaelor said sharply. "Not until we know what he touched."
The scout hesitated. "I sensed… another presence. Faint. Hidden. Not hybrid. Not wolf. Something…"
He shivered.
"One of the old bloodlines, perhaps."
The council erupted into alarmed growls and harsh whispers.
Kaelor closed his eyes, inhaling deeply.
"Prophecy stirs," he said at last.
The words tasted like rust and ash.
Rhyssa bared her teeth.
"Send the Hunt. Bring Alistair in. Alive if possible. Dead if necessary."
Voric nodded slowly.
"If he has bonded himself to the girl stirring the seal…"
He looked at Kaelor.
"…then the hybrid is no longer a nuisance. He is a threat."
Kaelor exhaled, a long, heavy breath that carried centuries of wars and losses and uneasy truths.
"Prepare the Moonveil Pack," he ordered quietly.
Every Elder straightened.
"If Alistair is tied to this awakening…"
His eyes hardened to steel.
"…then he is no longer ours to tolerate."
A cold wind swept through the Citadel as the council dispersed.
Far below, the tremor in the earth pulsed again—
this time stronger.
Kaelor's fur bristled as he whispered to the empty hall:
"What have you done, hybrid?"
"And who… have you found?"