🩸 THE WOLF IN THE FLAME

The sun was a smear of red above the ruins when Vaegor climbed from the pit.

He was bare-chested, blood-caked, and dragging behind him the severed arm of a beast no one had named. His skin bore glyphs inked in ash and pain not for beauty, but for warding. The mountain behind him had cracked open at dawn, and by dusk, it was silent again. Everything that had screamed inside it was dead now.

Vaegor wiped his blade on the fur of a fallen warhound and looked toward the horizon. A caravan of men watched him in silence, eyes wide. They had come seeking treasure. He had found only memory.

“Who are you?” one of them dared to ask.

Vaegor’s voice was gravel soaked in fire. “I was the son of no one. Now I am the Last of the Flameborn.”

The wind cut across the plateau, lifting ash like snow. He strapped his sword across his back — a crude, wide slab of iron forged before language. Its edge was chipped, but the blood it carried still steamed.

Suddenly, the ground trembled.

From the far ridge, a howl erupted not canine, not man. Something older.

A wolf unlike any seen since the gods had warred across the sky. Blacker than night, but traced with burning red veins of living fire. It stood the height of a warhorse and watched Vaegor with yellow eyes that burned with ancient hunger.

The men behind him panicked.

“That’s no beast,” one whispered. “That’s a curse.”

But Vaegor smiled.

“No,” he growled. “That’s my mount.”

He raised his hand, and the wolf strode toward him, flame licking from its sides. It stopped inches away. He placed his forehead against its snout.

“We ride again, Fenblood.”

The wolf snarled once — a sound like thunder cracking bone — and lowered itself.

Vaegor climbed onto its back.

The men watched as the Last Flameborn vanished into the dusk, a silhouette of scar and sinew, riding a wolf wreathed in warlight. They left no trail behind.

Only the smell of ash, and the memory of fear.