I felt him before I saw him.
A shiver beneath the skin.
A ripple in the seams of shadow.
A silence that silenced everything else.
The forest had gone still. Not dead—just... waiting. No birdsong. No branch-crack. No breeze. Like something ancient had inhaled and held the world in its chest.
Even Aeris stirred uneasily beside me, his sapphire-scaled body twitching with low warning pulses. His tail flicked, the glow dimming at his core.
"What is it?" Kael asked, hand on his hilt.
I didn't answer. Because I already knew.
He was here.
Umbra.
The wolf that doesn't bark. The fang without hunger. The shadow that walks only when death has stopped chasing and started watching.
I turned.
And there he was—no noise, no scent, no weight to the world beneath him.
Just presence.
His body was made of smoke and sin. Fur woven from starless nights. Eyes—two hollow moons—glowed a color I didn't have words for. Not white. Not silver. Just… ancient.
He didn't growl. Didn't crouch. Just stared.
Straight into me.
Not at me. Into me.
Like he was looking at the scaffolding beneath my skin. At the person beneath the person. At the lifetimes I hadn't remembered yet.
The others froze. Even Seris, whose expression never cracked—not even when she confessed to murdering me—stood like a statue, daggers lowered, face pale.
"Is that…?" Lyra whispered, but the question never made it to her lips.
Because he moved.
Only once.
He stepped toward me.
And the world blinked.
The trees were gone.
So was the frost, the group, the ground, the sky.
I stood in an endless plain of shifting black. Like ink that remembered how to move. Floating flecks of ash drifted sideways, then reversed. Gravity here was a matter of memory.
Umbra was in front of me, sitting like a sentinel. He was bigger here. Much bigger.
Taller than a house. Limbs like jagged ridgelines. His breath left scars in the air.
But his voice… oh gods, his voice…
It didn't come through ears.
It reverberated in my spine. In my blood. Each word landed like it had walked through ten thousand lifetimes to reach me.
"You have forgotten the pact."
My mouth opened. But no sound came.
"You called me. Across time. Across endings. Across the ash and the echo."
He stood. Each step cracked existence. Black ground peeled back in spirals.
"In your first life, I was your final act of will. In your second, your only companion. In your seventh…" he leaned closer, so close I could see entire galaxies reflected in his eye—"…you made me kill you."
I staggered back.
He didn't follow.
Just waited.
Patient. Absolute. Loyal.
My voice finally worked. Rough. Distant. Like someone else was speaking with my mouth.
"What… are you?"
He tilted his head. A slow, inhuman movement.
"Your shadow. Your hound. Your executioner."
Then softer—somehow more terrifying:
"Your truth."
I clenched my fists.
"You served me."
"I serve what you become."
"And what is that?"
His eyes flashed.
"The one who ends gods."
The world snapped again.
Back to the frost.
Back to the forest.
Aeris screeched as light exploded from my chest, flaring up through the rune scar where Lucien's blade had once pierced me.
Kael shouted my name. Lyra ran forward.
But Umbra stepped between us.
And they stopped.
He didn't growl.
Didn't bare his teeth.
But none of them could move. Not one step closer.
He turned his head to me, and something passed between us. A tether. A vow. A memory that hadn't happened yet.
I would call him.
He would come.
And when I did, someone would die.
I nodded.
And then—
He vanished.
Like he had never been.
The others didn't speak for a while.
When they finally did, Lyra said it first. Barely audible.
"…that was a Void-Wolf. Not just any. The Void-Wolf."
Kael didn't ask questions. He just stared at me differently now. Not with suspicion. But reverence. And a little fear.
Even Seris didn't meet my eyes.
And Aeris? He curled tighter around my shoulder, like he didn't know if I'd still be his Aetherion much longer.
I stood in the middle of them all.
And felt…
Strangely hollow.
Because part of me remembered Umbra's words.
But another part…
Spoke them with him.
I was starting to remember being the one who summoned the wolf beneath the world.
And even more terrifying…
I remembered why.
That night, as I drifted toward sleep—
I whispered a name into the dark.
It answered.
With a howl that shook the stars.