**Zulphithos**
**
Dark Age of Apes – Year 517 post-Agreement
Edge of the Split Veil, border between what remains of the Crescent Forest and what the apes now call the "Zone of Future Expansion"
Ana was standing in front of the recruitment gate of the 7th Lunar Battalion, an improvised firefighter uniform mixed with reinforced leather from an old pack.
The fangs were already emerging even without a full moon.
Wolf hunger was no longer just physical—it was now political.
The war that no one wanted to admit already had an official name:
**Growing Shadows Containment Campaign**
Translation: humans (and werewolves who chose the wrong side) against what remained of the fairies of the Vampire Kingdom, now allied with the very werewolves who guarded the Hundred Hearts.
An alliance that, for Ana, smelled like ancestral betrayal wrapped in a convenient prophecy.
She signed the form with fingernails that were already claws.
The recruiting sergeant, a thin human with eyes like someone who has seen too much, raised his eyebrow.
— A firefighter with wolf blood wanting to fight werewolves?
You know that half the battalion will hate you before you even open your mouth, right?
— I know — Ana replied, voice firm. — But I didn't come to be loved.
I came to stop the Hearts from being used to erase what was left of us.
The sergeant shrugged and stamped the paper.
"Good luck, moon bitch. You're going to need it."
Not everyone supported.
Far from it.
In the barracks, the nicknames started on the first day:
"Traitor Wolf", "False Beast", "The One Who Licks Human Boots".
During nighttime training, when the partial transformation came unintentionally, someone would always "accidentally" throw silver powder on the floor.
Ana could handle it.
Teeth clenched.
Clenched fists.
Hunger contained.
Meanwhile, hundreds of kilometers away, on an abandoned freight train that now served as housing for beggars and smugglers, Karma found Ziad Farhat.
Ziad was crouched near a fire made of old banknotes (useless now, but great for fire).
Torn clothes, grown beard, eyes that seemed to have seen the entire world reset.
— You're her brother, right? — Ziad asked bluntly, pointing with his chin at a crumpled photo that Karma carried in his coat's inner pocket.
Ana, still 19 years old on her face, smiling in front of an old car.
Karma sat on the other side of the fire.
— Half-brother.
Or reflection.
Or what was left when the system decided we needed two to carry the weight.
Ziad laughed, coughing out smoke.
— I was once a farmer.
Then I sang to kill my mother.
Then I saw the world turn to code.
Now I rob trains that don't go anywhere.
And you?
What does a wolf-archangel-assassin-tutor do when his sister decides to become a soldier?
Karma looked at the flames.
— I try not to let her die alone in this stupid war.
Ziad took a small object from his pocket, wrapped in a dirty cloth.
Unwrapped.
It was a fragment of moon bone, the same type as the Lost Key that Karma had already found years before.
— I stole this from a carriage that no one opens anymore.
They say it's Lyra's first child.
The real Lyra.
The fairy goddess, not the werewolf you knew.
Karma took the shard carefully.
When his fingers touched the bone, a memory that wasn't his flashed by:
a woman with wings of shadow and eyes like a crescent moon, giving birth to a child that cried blood.
The first child.
Which never appeared in the prophecies because the prophecies were written later.
—Is he still alive? asked Karma.
Ziad shrugged.
— Live.
Or there is.
Or wait.
But the point is: if your sister wants to fight the fairies in league with the werewolves... perhaps she needs to know that there is an heir older than them all.
Someone who didn't choose sides because they were born before sides existed.
Karma kept the fragment.
— Why are you telling me this?
— Because I'm tired of seeing good people die because of poorly told stories.
And because… — Ziad looked at the cracked sky — maybe we can still change the script before the next reset.
Back at the barracks, things started to change.
Not suddenly.
Not by miracle.
Ana just wouldn't stop.
When a platoon mate fell during a night exercise, she carried him on her back for seven kilometers without complaining.
When a patrol was ambushed by fairy shadows, she was the first to advance, claws open, howling a challenge that made even her enemies hesitate.
When they had to cross a minefield of broken contracts (soul-sucking financial traps), she led the way, smelling danger with a wolf's instinct.
Little by little, the insults turned into respectful silence.
Then nods.
Then, someone offering water without her having to ask.
The day the battalion received its first real mission—intercepting a convoy of stolen Hearts being taken to the heart of the werewolf-fairy alliance—the sergeant called Ana to the front of the formation.
— Towers.
You enter at the tip of the spear.
Because, whether we like it or not... you're the only one here who truly understands what we're going through.
Ana looked at the faces around her.
Some still doubted.
But most… most looked with something that looked like respect.
She nodded.
— I didn't come to prove that I'm better than them — he said, voice low but clear. — I came to prove that it can be different.
That night, while the battalion slept, Karma appeared at the barracks fence.
Not as a wolf.
Not as an enemy.
Like a brother.
He threw the moonbone fragment over the fence.
Ana caught it in the air.
- What is that?
"A possibility," he replied. —Lyra's first child.
What came before the division between fairies and wolves.
Maybe… the only one who can talk to both sides without lying.
Ana closed her hand around the bone.
He was hot.
As if it still pulsed.
—So the war isn't just against them, — he murmured. — It's against forgetting what we once were.
Karma smiled from the other side of the fence.
— Good luck, sister.
And when it's over...
Tell me what it was like to be the first to gain respect fighting on the side that no one expected.
Ana kept the fragment close to her heart.
Tomorrow the war would truly begin.
But for the first time in centuries,
she wasn't going to go into it alone.
**End of Chapter 6**