Volume One · Chapter One · The Warmth Left on the Hilt

When the elder handed me the knife, the hilt still carried the warmth of the man before me.

A quicksilver tactical blade. Runes etched along both edges, dense and fine. Even across the iron table, I could smell it—that scorched-rust reek, like burnt iron and old blood. I reached out. My fingertips found the tacky residue on the cord-wrapped grip. Sweat. Blood. Something in between. I didn't look down.

"The last one who used it," the elder said from across the fire, his voice scraping like dry wood against dry wood, "died."

I slid the knife into the sheath at my waist. Steady motion. Hands didn't shake.

He was watching for that. Firelight bled into his hollow sockets, his two clouded eyes fixed on my fingers like flies settled on meat.

"I know," I said.

"You don't." He pulled a half-burned branch from the flames, its tip still glowing dull red. With it, he drew a line on the ground—ash and soil turned over, exposing a pale scar beneath. "This is the overpass. North of it, the North District. South of it, the South Bank. Cross this line, and you're in bloodkind hunting grounds. Step in, and no one backs you. No one knows you. No one gives a d*mn whether you live or die."

"I give a d*mn whether I live or die."

He looked up at me. The fire popped—one ember spat out, landed on his cloak, burned a small hole through the wool. He didn't brush it off.

"Then stay alive," he said. "Long enough to get close to her."

Wind slipped through the cracks in the boiler room's corrugated walls, rattling the list of names pinned there. I glanced sideways. Twenty-three names, arranged by year. The bottom few rows had faded to almost nothing. Brenn's name wasn't on that wall.

I'd followed the elder for seven years. It was the first time I'd thought the wall had too much empty space.

By the time I got back to my burrow, the moon had squeezed through a hole in the warehouse roof.

I sat on a concrete block at the entrance, drew the short blade from its sheath, and held it to the moonlight. The runes on its face gave off a faint cyan glow in the dark—like tiny live worms swimming under the metal.Quicksilver.The most unlucky word in the werewolf clans. Silver alone wasn't lethal. Silver etched with curses? That was different.

I turned the blade over and found a tiny line of text carved near the tang. The previous hunter's name: Brenn.

I knew Brenn. Three years ago, when he was still alive, we'd hunted a mutant bear together in the North District scrap yards. He had an old scar running from shoulder to wrist on his right arm. Said a bloodkind prince had given it to him. Kept it to remind himself toaim straighter next time.

I didn't know how Brenn died. The elder hadn't said. I wasn't going to ask.

I slid the knife back into its sheath, stood, and turned into the burrow's depths. Darkness swallowed my shoulders, my neck, the crown of my head. Only my footsteps bounced through the tunnel—a stone rolling further and further away.

Three days later, I left.

Before I went, the elder gave me a folded map. Ink-printed, edges creased to the point of tearing, some spots worn translucent from being touched too many times. Another man's fingerprints. I rolled it up, tucked it into my inner pocket, pressed against the short blade. The cord-wrapped hilt rubbed against my ribs with every step.

At dusk, leaving the North District industrial zone, I looked back.

The forest of abandoned chimneys stood against the gray-purple sky like a row of broken fingers, all pointing the same way. Wind pushed in from the railway tracks—rust and machine oil—slipped under my collar. Cold.

I turned south.

The concrete beneath my feet grew thinner. Cracks spread wider. Grass pushed through the gaps—short and yellow, crunching underfoot like dried skin. Further on, even the grass vanished. Only bare gravel and cracked gray earth remained, like a giant flayed wound.

The overpass loomed ahead.

Below it, a dry riverbed. Rusted bicycles. Shredded tires. A few pieces of clothing whose original colors I couldn't guess. The bridge itself—empty. No cars. No lights. Only the wind moaning through its arches, like something caught in the iron framework, breathing slow and labored.

I stood at the edge for a moment.

The moon hadn't risen yet. The sky was fully dark. The darkness beneath the arches was thicker than the night around it—solid, congealed.

First step. Second. Third.

I crossed.

The ground on the South Bank was harder than I'd expected. Not concrete-hard. Stone-hard. Pale gray, chiseled flat, laid in neat rows. My boots made a different sound now—from a dull thud to a crisp tap, echoing back at me several times down the empty street.

I stopped. Crouched. Touched the ground with my fingers.

Cold stone. No dust—as if it had just been wiped clean. But the street had been empty for a long time. The low walls on either side were choked with dead vines, their tips curled into black, wiry spirals. Burned veins.

I stood and kept walking.

What I didn't know—at that moment, behind a window on the top floor of the South Bank manor, a pair of amber eyes was watching the overpass from across the entire district.

Evelyn pressed her fingertips against the stone balustrade. The stone was cold and hard; the chill seeped from her pads into her knuckles, layer by layer, like wax setting. Night wind lifted the curtain and let it fall again, brushing her back with a dry rustle.

Footsteps approached from behind. Stopped three paces away.

"Your Majesty."

The attendant's voice—neither high nor low, stripped of inflection, like a sentence repeated so many times it had lost all meaning.

"The Prince summons you."

Evelyn didn't turn. Her gaze remained fixed on the overpass. Nothing left there now. Only wind.

"I heard."

Outside, the wind swept dust from the bridge surface and tossed it skyward. A small puff of gray-white smoke drifted apart in the moonlight—crushed bone powder, floating north.

The Shadow Sanctum had no lamps.

Sanctumwas generous. It was really just a north-facing prayer room on the manor's ground floor. Low ceiling, arch ribs spotted with dark mold. Animal fat in the candlesticks; smoke rose and pooled beneath the vault like a gray haze. Aldwin von Kleist sat on the high stone chair, one hand supporting his jaw, the other lightly tapping the armrest with his fingertips. One. Two. Three. Pause. Again.

The rhythm of a dying animal's heartbeat.

Evelyn stood at the bottom of the steps. She didn't bow. She hadn't bowed in this room for a long time.

"What did you see?" Aldwin's voice dropped from above, flattened by the arch, pressing against her eardrums like a damp leaf.

"A wolf. Crossed the overpass."

"How many?"

"One."

His fingers stopped. "A lone wolf dares to cross?"

Evelyn didn't answer. She didn't need to. Aldwin was talking to himself, not to her.

"Get close to him," the Prince said. "Make him trust you. Then—kill him."

"Why just one?"

Aldwin finally looked down at her. His eye sockets were deep; the candlelight reached only below his nose, leaving the upper half of his face in shadow—a plaster bust sliced in half. His lips twitched, the muscles at the corners pulling into a curve. Not a smile.

"Because he's a hunter," he said. "And he's carrying a knife."

Evelyn knew she was carrying a knife, too. A short blade, hidden in her sleeve pocket. She'd checked it before leaving. Steel. No runes. No markings. Just a personal item, even if found. She never carried clan emblems. Those things talked—and she didn't need anyone speaking for her.

"What identity do you want me to use?" she asked. Her voice flattened in the Sanctum, spreading across the flagstones like water. No ripples.

Aldwin tapped the armrest three more times.

"You are the Queen," he said, "but you're also a woman. You don't need an identity. Just appear where he can see you. He'll come closer on his own. It's a hunter's nature. They chase anything that moves."

Something in that sentence felt wrong. Her lips moved—but she didn't speak. She just turned it over in her mind, looked at its underside, and turned it back.

As she turned to leave, Aldwin's voice pursued her from behind, trailing down her spine, cold all the way to her tailbone.

"Remember, Evelyn. You sit on that chair not because you deserve it—but because I allowed you to sit there. If you fail, the chair won't wait."

She didn't turn back. Just stood with her back to him for three seconds. Then lifted her foot and walked out.

The corridor's draft pushed her skirt aside. The candle flames all leaned in the same direction at once—like a crowd turning their heads in unison.

Evelyn reached the end of the corridor, stopped at the corner, leaned against the wall. She raised her left hand and turned her wrist over. The blade in her sleeve pocket pressed against her wrist bone. Cold as ice.

She didn't know what the werewolf looked like. She only knew he'd come to kill her. But he didn't know she'd come to kill him too—at least, not yet.

She refastened the sleeve pocket and walked on. The corridor dimmed again.

The wind stopped.

And the werewolf—Lane—crouched in the shadows of an alley, adjusting his sheath upward so it hugged his side tighter. Twenty minutes walking this street—he'd seen only two skinny cats, a flock of pigeons, and a figure rummaging through a trash can. That figure had frozen at the sight of him, then turned and run. Fast. Like they'd seen something they shouldn't.

Lane kept walking. He didn't pursue.

His boots tapped against the stone—one step at a time, the sound stretching long down the empty street.

The moon was directly overhead now.

What he didn't know: someone else, far away, was watching him in a different way. Crouched behind a window on an old building, copper-rimmed glasses crooked on his nose, a charcoal pencil pressing down on a still-wet sketch. Rough lines on the paper—a backlit figure, shoulders broad but lean, crossing a deserted flagstone street.

A scar ran along the figure's jawline.

Adrian set down the charcoal, lifted the sketch, and held it to the moonlight. The charcoal dust caught the sidelight with a fine silver glint—a thin layer of frost.

"Hunter," he murmured, his voice so soft even the dust on the windowsill didn't stir. "Crossed. Three days earlier than predicted."

He flipped the sketch over. The back was already filled—the same silhouette, different angles, different light positions. From the first sighting by the North District tracks, to the overpass base, to the South Bank street corner. Like a crow on a rooftop, he'd watched in silence, etching everything that passed into his pages.

Adrian tucked this page into the middle of his notebook, then turned to a blank one and wrote at the top:"Day One · South of the Bridge."

Below it, vast empty space waited for tomorrow, and the day after, and countless more late-night lines to fill it.

He sharpened his charcoal pencil, leaned against the window frame, and waited. Moonlight seeped through the lattice, falling onto the blank page—white and bright.