Beneath the Vault of Ashes
The halls beneath the Ebon Spire were not meant for the living.
Mira felt it in her marrow as she followed Alaric down the spiral stair carved from black stone, each step echoing with a memory. The torches lining the descent didn't flicker—here, flame was muted, as though the air itself feared to breathe too loudly. Ironbound sconces bled rust; the walls were lined with reliefs of wolves entwined with human forms, bound by vines, thorns, chains, and halos. Each carving told stories the surface dared not remember.
"This way," Alaric said softly, voice taut. "Only three Alphas since the founding were given keys to the true vault. I never used mine. Until now."
They reached a narrow door, its surface a shifting tapestry of mirrored obsidian. Alaric pressed his palm to a shallow depression, and with a heavy groan, the vault groaned open, exhaling a stale breath of forgotten centuries.
Inside, the air was colder. Dust lay like frost upon rows of ancient scrolls, bound tomes, and crystalline memory spheres—artifacts from the age before the Sundering, before the werewolf kin were divided by doctrine and fear. The scent of old leather, ancient blood, and suppressed truth hit Mira like a slap.
"Caelen always suspected," Alaric said as he stepped through the arch. "That the Council's history was curated—cauterized. That truth was bartered in secret, then buried where light would never find it. I didn't want to believe him. Not then. I thought… if I just followed the old path long enough, I could make it right without breaking everything."
Mira reached out to a sphere resting atop a silver pedestal. The second her fingers brushed it, visions tore through her mind—fleeting and sharp like splinters. A burning village. Wolves branded with molten sigils. A young girl screaming as her dreams were carved from her skull by clerics in white. She staggered, caught herself on a nearby shelf.
"They erased us," she whispered, voice trembling. "They took the dreamwalkers. The old ones. They called us dangerous because we saw too much. They didn't protect the realm—they pruned it."
Alaric turned toward a sealed compartment at the back of the chamber. "There's something worse," he murmured. "The Vault of Culling. It contains the decrees signed by Alpha Yoren during the Shadow Purge. Sealed mandates to eliminate entire bloodlines. One of them… was directed at my own kin."
Mira's eyes widened. "You knew?"
He shook his head. "Not fully. I knew Caelen's banishment wasn't just about his defiance. There was a silence between the lines—one I never dared interpret."
Together they cracked the compartment open. Inside were parchment scrolls edged in red wax. One bore Alaric's own crest—sealed when he was only a child. It read:
> "In the event of prophetic deviation within the Alpha Line, initiate Culling Sequence 23. Burn the Hollow Vale. Silence the dreamseer. Secure the loyalty of the High Howl."
Mira recoiled. "This wasn't oversight. This was orchestration."
Alaric dropped the scroll. "They saw the future Caelen carried. The one I feared. The same future the exiles demand we uncover. This… is the proof that changes everything."
Footsteps echoed above.
Mira tensed. "They know we're here."
Alaric turned, his expression carved from stone. "Then let them come. We leave nothing behind. Take the spheres. The scrolls. Everything."
Mira swept the memory spheres into her satchel, sealing them with a glyph of silence. Alaric slung a bag of scrolls over his shoulder just as the vault door began to groan closed. "They're locking us in," he snarled.
"No," Mira hissed, stepping forward. "They're sealing themselves out."
She reached into her cloak and pulled a shard of obsidian inscribed with the runes of the Moondream Temple—one of the last remnants of the order slain decades ago. Pressing it against the wall, she whispered a phrase in the forgotten tongue. The vault trembled, and the back wall opened like a mouth into deeper dark.
"Come," she said. "We go where even the Council has never dared to look."
They vanished into the abyss behind the vault as the last door slammed shut.
Above, in the uppermost halls, Elder Marlyns stood with a clenched jaw. "They have seen too much."
Beside him, the cloaked figure of Liris—the First Moonless's disciple—smiled faintly. "Then perhaps it's time we show the rest of Ironfang what it means to protect truth with fire."
But far beneath, in the breathless dark, Alaric and Mira pressed on, carrying the truth like a torch through the bones of the forgotten. And for the first time in centuries, the buried voices stirred, whispering: The time of judgment has come.