As the moonlight was cut into strips like rotten meat by the iron cage bars, Alyssa was strangling the throat of the third Night Shadow Wolf with a taming whip. Sparks from the beast's front claws scratching the ground splashed onto the bronze wolf head buckle on her boots, and the coagulated blood residue in the beast's eyes, which were cast three hundred years ago, was oozing a fresh smell.
"Tighten it tighter!" Lucien's emerald ring tapped a crazy rhythm on the edge of the execution platform. He always liked to hold this kind of entertainment on full moon nights - locking twelve night shadow wolves and three trainers in the Colosseum, and those who survived until dawn could lick the silver powder on the soles of his boots.
Alyssa's thorn tattoo throbbed under her ribs. There was something wrong with these night shadow wolves. There were human fingernails embedded in the gaps between their fangs, and dried wax tears were stuck in the corners of their eyes - the remnants of the blood feeding ritual. When she whipped the beasts that rushed from the left, the silver spikes on the whip scratched the wolf's ears, and the blood beads that splashed out condensed into a miniature wailing wall array in mid-air.
"Is the little wild cat distracted?" Lucien suddenly threw the wine pot. Alyssa dodged it with her head tilted, and the pottery pot exploded on the stone pillar behind her. The aged wine mixed with some black powder covered the mouth and nose of the night shadow wolf on the right. The beast wailed like a baby crying, and the dark red lines under its fur formed a complete crown of thorns.
Alyssa jumped up on the howling stone pillar, and the animal taming whip wrapped around the crossbeam chain. The vertical pupils of the Night Shadow Wolf swelled to blood red in the moonlight, and she saw an illusion in the abyss-like reflection - a burning crown of thorns suspended above the mountain of corpses, and the crown's spikes pierced her own chest.
"Damn it..." She leaned back to avoid the wolf's claws that tore her cloak, and the bone whistle hidden at her waist rolled onto the sand. Alyssa's tattoo suddenly became hot, and the thorn pattern rushed to her heart like a living thing. She grabbed the bone whistle and stuffed it into the wolf's mouth. The moment the beast's sharp teeth closed, some ancient silver wolf language exploded in its skull.
The illusion became clearer. The skeletons of silver wolf cubs were piled under the crown, and each skeleton had a barbed thorn stuck in its heart. Alyssa's fingertips touched something sticky in the sand - it was the brain matter left over from last night's blood feeding ceremony, which was slowly seeping into the mouth of the crying human face in the cracks of the stone.
"A reward for you!" Lucien suddenly threw his sword. The moonstone inlaid on the hilt hit Alyssa's shoulder blade, and she rolled to the edge of the Colosseum. Half a baby's skull floated in the bronze gutter, and the poison hemlock flowers blooming in the bone gaps were dripping blue blood.
The last two night shadow wolves locked necks and howled in the moonlight, their shadows intertwined on the ground to form a crown shape. Alyssa's tattoo had spread to her collarbone, and the thorns pierced her skin and oozed black blood. She tore off her cloak and wrapped it around her right hand, and the cloth soaked in wolf blood ignited a blue flame in her palm - the flame of the eclipse burst out uncontrollably for the first time.
Right now.
The beasts' wails suddenly stopped. Their pupils dilated into dark mirrors, reflecting the shadow behind Alyssa: a woman wearing a crown of thorns giving birth, and the baby with an umbilical cord entangled in it was covered with barbs.
"Mother..." Alyssa's canine teeth pierced the tip of her tongue. The face of the woman raised in the illusion was clearly the burned portrait of the Silver Wolf Princess in Kane's bedroom. Blood dripped from the corner of her mouth, drawing a crooked wolf head totem on the sand - exactly the same as the smuggling route mark on the surface of the bone whistle.
Lucien's boots crushed the hemlock. "Interesting," he said, pulling Alyssa's braids and nuzzling her bleeding tattoos. "You smell like my brother's incense."
There was a roar of broken iron chains coming from the dungeon. Alyssa's Eclipse Flame suddenly surged, burning along the taming whip towards Lucien's silver sable cloak. The young lord laughed and stepped back, letting the flames lick his deliberately exposed collarbone - there was a miniature crown of thorns tattooed there, exactly the same as the pattern under the fur of the Night Shadow Wolf.
"Tomorrow night the convoy will be carrying a living sacrifice," he threw the bronze key into the flames, "and if you dare to come, you will be the one leading the beasts that have drunk the hot wolf's blood."
When Alyssa extinguished the flame in her palm, she found that the moonstone fragments on the sand formed half of the Silver Wolf Clan emblem. She kicked the stone away, revealing a more hidden pattern underneath - the fossilized footprint of the first Silver Wolf King, with thorns wrapped around his ankle.
The sound of Kane's black iron scepter hitting came from underground. Alyssa's tattoo began to cool, and the thorn pattern retreated below the collarbone, but left spider-web-like burn marks on the skin. She picked up half a piece of poison hemlock and stuffed it into the bone whistle. When the blue juice seeped into the pores, the whistle turned into the whimper of a dying silver wolf.
Blood-red lanterns lit up in the direction of the warehouse. Alyssa's hand, which was reaching for her waist, suddenly froze. In the hidden pocket where the smuggling route map should have been hidden, a strand of silver-white hair appeared, with a faded engagement bell tied to the end of the hair.
The moment the moonlight shifted past the howling stone pillars, she could clearly see the family emblem engraved inside the bell: a crown of thorns wrapped around a silver wolf, exactly the same as the crown worn by the woman in the illusion.
The night owl sneered from the dome of the Colosseum. When Alyssa crushed the bell, the bronze fragments cut her fingertips, and blood dripped onto the fossilized footprints. The thorns suddenly grew three inches long and pierced through the phantom of the wolf king from three hundred years ago.