The fire crackled, its warmth a fragile shield against the vast, cold dark of the Tibetan night. The silence around it was heavy, thick with unspoken trauma and the sheer, unnerving presence of the man who had conjured the flames from nothing. It was a silence that begged to be filled, if only to prove they were still more than just frightened animals.
It was Derek, his face etched with exhaustion but his spine still straight, who finally found the courage. He looked across the dancing flames at Wolfen, who sat slightly apart, his pale eyes reflecting the firelight like a wolf's.
"What's your name?" Derek asked, his voice rough but clear. "Your real one."
All eyes turned to Wolfen. He didn't seem surprised by the question. He looked at Derek as if he were a mildly interesting specimen that had just learned to speak.
"Wolfen Welfric," he said, the name dropping into the silence with the weight of a stone in a pond.
From beside Derek, Jordan let out a low, involuntary mutter, more a breath than a word. "Weird name."
The fire seemed to crackle louder in the sudden stillness. Wolfen's head turned with predatory slowness, his gaze pinning Jordan in place. "And how is that?" The question was soft, but it carried the sharpness of a drawn blade.
Jordan paled, opening his mouth to stammer a retraction, but Eva cut in, her own frustration and protective instinct overriding her fear. "It's not his fault. You do have a weird name." She met his gaze, her chin raised in defiance. "I mean, come on. Wolfen Welfric? It sounds like a character from a fantasy novel."
Instead of anger, a low, genuine laugh rumbled from Wolfen's chest. It was a startling sound, devoid of warmth but full of a dark, private amusement. "Does it?"
Leo, ever direct, saw an opening. "So what's it mean, then? A name like that's gotta mean something."
Wolfen's smile lingered, a ghost on his lips. He looked into the heart of the fire, as if seeing its history written in the embers. "Welfen," he said, the old pronunciation rolling off his tongue with ancient weight, "means 'the bringer of chaos.'" His eyes flicked back to them. "And Welfric… means 'the bringer of peace.'"
He let the duality hang in the air for a moment, watching them process the contradiction.
"Together," he finished, his voice dropping to a near-whisper that somehow carried to every ear, "Wolfen Welfric means 'the bringer of balance.'"
The words settled over the group. It wasn't just a name. It was a title. A destiny. It explained the terrifying paradox of the man before them—the one who could destroy with a thought and save with a whim, who valued neither chaos nor peace, but the terrible, perfect equilibrium that lay between them. He wasn't a savior or a destroyer. He was the scales themselves. And they were all just weights upon them.