It was dawn break. The sky was pale, streaked with fire, yet the city felt colder than night. The grey army pressed on—bound by grief, bone-tired but unyielding. Not one soldier dared falter.
Kaelen walked among them, armor heavy on his shoulders, eyes never softening. He bore no luxury of rest, for he was Lycaon's second—commander, brother, and shield. Every street he crossed, every guard he passed, he reminded himself: If the capital falls, then all Lycaon fights for falls with it.
Alvric slept, though not peacefully. His age dragged him into rest, but his mind roamed endlessly over fears he dared not voice. Each hour without word from the west carved a deeper line of worry into his face.
And in the dungeons below, the vampire remained alone.Silver burned his wrists, light gnawed at his skin. His chest rose shallowly, each breath an effort, each heartbeat weaker than the last. Hunger he could endure. Thirst he could endure. But this silence—the absence of any voice, any sound but his own strained breathing—was the cruellest torture of all.
His thoughts unraveled in fragments. Faces from his past. Lycaon's eyes. Memories that weren't whole, weren't clear, but still heavy with feeling. Why him? Why now? His mind clung to those memories, the only warmth in this blinding cage.
And above, Kaelen's steps never stopped, the city's walls never rested.Both warrior and prisoner endured.Both, in their own way, waiting for news that would decide the night's cost.
The dungeon breathed with silence, but to the vampire it was no longer still. His vision flickered—the burn of silver and light bending his senses until memory and present twisted into one.
The crackle of the torches became the sound of firewood on a hearth, long ago. The damp stone beneath him felt, for a heartbeat, like earth under an open sky. And there—across the haze—he thought he saw Lycaon, not as the Alpha draped in power and fury, but as something older, untouched by fur or fang. Ancient, yes, but human in ways the werewolf king could never be again.
"Lycaon…" his lips shaped the name, though no one was there.
The illusion wavered, slipping away as his body sagged against the chains. He blinked hard, forcing his thoughts back, but the pain made every breath a tether pulling him between two worlds—the world of what was, and what now held him captive.
The silver burned hotter with each passing hour, the brightness gnawing into his skull until thought itself began to fray. The vampire's head lolled forward, breath shallow, eyes glazed—but behind the blur, visions stirred.
At first, it was faint. A figure in the light, half-shadowed, standing beyond the bars. Lycaon—or was it? The face wavered, shifting between the Alpha who had crouched before him hours ago and another, older visage, untouched by wolf or beast.
No… not a wolf. Not then.
He remembered laughter—not sharp or cruel, but rare and fleeting, something he thought he'd imagined. He remembered words spoken not in command, but in kinship, as though the two of them had walked side by side rather than across the lines of war.
The hallucination smiled at him, the way Lycaon never did. "You always were stubborn," it said—or perhaps he only thought it did.
His body trembled, chains rattling. He blinked, forcing focus, but the torchlight betrayed him: every flare of flame bent the Alpha's features into something older, softer, ancient. The memory of Lycaon who was not a wolf but something far beyond.
And then—The illusion and the present overlapped.
When he thought of Lycaon now, the wolf's piercing gaze was no longer separate from the man in his memories. They became the same—two lives, one being. Past bleeding into present.
"Lycaon," the vampire whispered, lips cracked, voice breaking. "Which one are you now?"
No answer came, only silence and burning light. But in his mind, the ancient Lycaon still stood, watching.
...
Long before kingdoms and clans, before silver and curses, there was only the moon.On its surface, where light met shadow, two beings stood.
Cassius, the angel of radiance—gentle, eternal, carrying dawn within his very soul.And Lycaon, the devil-god of the dark side—fierce, unyielding, the master of silence and storms.
They should have been enemies, eternally divided, one guarding light and the other born of shadow. Yet, where their realms touched, they met. And in that fragile space, they saw each other—not as god and angel, not as dark and light, but as two souls who belonged.
Lycaon, the feared devil-god, smiled only for his angel. And Cassius, though bathed in light, found warmth only in Lycaon's darkness. Together, they walked the border where brightness surrendered to shadow, and there they loved.
But love between what should never have touched carries its price. The moon itself still remembers them—one half drowned in shadow, the other blazing with light, forever divided yet eternally bound.
And now, in his cell, Cassius's vision blurred. The silver's burn, the light's punishment—all faded. In its place, he saw Lycaon again. Not the Alpha before him, but the devil-god of his memories, staring at him across the border of light and darkened smile, just as he had on the moon.
The silver burned into his skin, the light scalded his eyes, but Cassius no longer felt the pain. His mind slipped beyond the dungeon's stone walls, beyond the world itself.
He was back on the moon.The border of light and shadow stretched endless before him—bright on one side, drowned in black on the other. And there, as always, stood Lycaon. Not the Alpha in mortal flesh, but the devil-god of shadow, watching him with eyes like molten storms.
"Lycaon…" Cassius whispered, though his lips cracked and his voice bled. His gaze fell on the man before him—the Alpha prince visiting his cell—but all he saw was the god he once loved. The lines blurred, memory and present folding into one.
"You smiled, once… do you remember?" Cassius murmured, his chest heaving. "On the border… when light touched shadow. You weren't a monster then. You were mine."
For a fleeting instant, he swore he saw it—that same shadowed smile, carved in memory. His heart ached, torn between past love and present torment. He reached forward weakly, fingertips trembling in the brightness, as though trying to touch the Lycaon who stood on the moon's edge long ago.
To him, the Alpha prince and the devil-god were the same. The face before him and the one in memory merged until there was no difference.
"Don't let them take you from me again…" he whispered.
And in the far distance of the West, as steel clashed and grief gnawed at the battlefield, Lycaon suddenly froze mid-stride. His breath caught, his chest tightening as if a whisper threaded itself through the wind—soft, desperate, aching.
His name.
It wasn't a war cry, nor a command, but a call. A longing that reached him across time and space, across chains and silver, as though someone missed him so deeply that the world itself bent to carry their voice.
He turned his head sharply, scanning the broken horizon, but no one was there. Only the dying sun bleeding over the battlefield. Yet, for a moment, he swore he felt it—an old tether pulling at his soul, begging him to return safely.
And though he could not name it, the echo of that call lingered in his chest like a phantom heartbeat.