Chapter 6: Dead fang

By the fourth morning, I finally made it over the ridge.

That’s where the real old-growth began. It wasn’t just big trees, everything felt changed. The air pressed in heavy and unmoving, not empty but crowded, like stepping into a room full of people all holding their breath. Trees like nothing I’d seen; not the tall, skinny kind you get in young woods, but fat and ancient, with bark so deeply rutted it looked like someone carved it by hand. Roots cracked up through the earth, weaving along the surface like the spine of something buried deep and patient. Underneath, the plants huddled low to the ground, twisted in strange ways, and what light managed to filter down came in thin, greenish shards, like sunlight shining through water.

I stood at the edge, looking down.

The mark on my shoulder grew warm, one pulse. Solid. Not a warning, but something closer to: yes.

Honestly, I’d known since the first morning. I picked east because that’s the way it pulled me, though I wouldn’t let myself say the name out loud. Naming it felt like deciding, and I was too busy hanging on to survival to spare a thought for where I was ending up. Still, the pull was always there, steady as a bruise you keep noticing but doesn’t actually hurt.

Dead Fang territory. Everyone knew those words, said them heavy, the way older wolves want something glued into your memory forever. Nobody comes out of Dead Fang ground unchanged. That’s the legend: feral wolves, broken ones, outcasts so dangerous no pack would claim them. Wolves out here long enough to forget they were ever anything else.

I headed down the ridge.

The fever dug deeper overnight. My whole skin felt off, tight, itchy, kind of alien. Where the wound sat under my leathers, a deep, gnawing ache told me my body was busy fighting back. Not infected. Not yet. Still, the raw edges had crept wider since dawn, and I’d already thrown everything I had at it.

Didn’t matter. Stopping hasn’t been an option for days now.

About twenty minutes into the old forest, the poison made its point.

No warning. I stepped between two roots, feet uneven, and then my legs vanished under me, not shaking, just gone. I crashed knees-first onto the ground; pain shot through my left side, and I let out a noise I wouldn’t call dignified. My hands barely caught the roots before my face hit. And I just stayed there, hunched and shaking, the world pitching sideways and refusing to right itself.

Worse than before.

All those days building up landed at once, a storm in my veins, limbs leaden, thoughts slipping sideways and never sticking. My vision turned perfectly silver. It wasn’t an edge-glow or a careful shift, just pure wolf vision dropping in all at once. Everything around me turned sharp and cold, every shadow and root carved out in perfect detail.

The mark on my shoulder stopped being heat and turned into something bigger.

I can’t really explain it. Like... something woke up. Not me. Not my wolf. The mark itself, the old bloodline thing that had been quiet for centuries, snapped alert and took over. It pushed through me, rushing the wrong way against the poison, a collision so intense I felt it everywhere: bones, teeth, behind the eyes. I pressed my head to the root and just held on.

There wasn’t anything to say. I gritted my teeth and waited.

It went on for a long time.

Then, sudden as a thunderclap, it was over. Gone.

I gathered myself and sat back.

Steady hands. My sight faded from silver to normal. The four-day ache in my veins was just... gone. Clean, as though none of it had ever happened.

I breathed. The forest pressed in, no wind, no birds, not even small animals rustling. There was only this living hush, thick and old, settling around me like a weighted blanket. Silence with teeth.

After a while, I got up.

Hard to say how long I wandered. Long enough for whatever green daylight was left to bleed out completely. The dark here was different, not absence, more like presence. I could see it all through that silver edge, even without shifting: the roots, the trunks, the towering pillars of this place that felt older than the word “cathedral.”

I moved mostly by reflex. Step. Step. Step. The wound kept grinding away and the fever was still there, but my mind started to run. Muttered sounds under my breath, didn’t matter the words. I just needed the noise to fill up the silence, which was starting to feel like something alive.

Eventually my legs gave out.

Not a stumble. Not a choice. Just a blank, final end to their long work. I had a split second to realize it before I went down, hitting the ground face-first.

The leaf litter was soft, softer than anything I’d found in four days. I just lay there, fever behind my eyes, pain a constant thrum in my side, watching roots as thick and ancient as any I’d seen. Some part of me understood, wordless, that I’d made it here. Stabbed, buried, poisoned, hunted by rogues and still alive on Dead Fang ground.

Vision was fading around the edges, seconds left, maybe less. My body had nothing left except stubbornness, and even that was running out.

That’s when I saw them.

Three figures between the trees, barely outlined, perfectly still. Not moving, not making a sound. Just there, as if they’d always been there, waiting for me to catch up.

I tried to speak. My mouth moved, but nothing came out.

The darkness pressed in, swallowing the shapes, the roots, everything. The last thing I felt was the mark on my shoulder, burning hotter than it had in days.

Stronger, too, like it saw something waiting in the dark that I hadn’t even noticed yet.