Dawn did not come yet.
What light crept over the mountains was not the sun's, but the cold shimmer of the ward-fires men had raised in desperation.
They painted the clouds in blue and white, flickering like the veins of some dying god.
The air stank of blood and burning oil.
From the ruined walls of Varth Hollow,
Jrogathrax watched the horizon smolder.
His wounds had closed in the dark, steam rising from them as if the flesh rejected the notion of death.
Each heartbeat sounded like a hammer striking an anvil somewhere deep inside him.
He was not alone for long.
A hum carried through the morning stillness, low, steady, metallic.
From the north came the Hunters of the Crucible, the last knight-order sworn to exterminate what remained of his kind.
Their steeds were iron stallions belching smoke, their armor etched with glyphs that shimmered like captured lightning.
There were twelve of them.
Each carried a different weapon of the old arts,
A sun-lance, a chain of silver thorns, a spear with a core of star-fire.
They rode in silence, for men who spoke his name were said to draw his gaze.
Jrogathrax bared his fangs in a grim semblance of a smile.
He did not flee. He waited.
The first of the knights dismounted, driving a rod of silver into the ground.
A cage of light erupted around him, a holy snare meant to hold the beast.
They had used it before on lesser creatures, and it had worked. But the wards hissed and cracked as they touched Jrogathrax's shadow, as if the runes themselves feared what they touched.
When he moved, it was with the inevitability of a collapsing mountain.
His claws met steel, and the air screamed. One knight was torn in half before he could finish his prayer; another's helm was crushed, the face beneath vanishing in a red mist.
But the rest pressed in, disciplined, relentless.
Magic flared in arcs of gold and violet. Spears pierced his hide; chains wrapped around his throat.
He staggered, howling as the enchantments burned through muscle. For a heartbeat, they thought they had him.
Then the beast tore free.
The chains fell away, glowing red.
The nearest knight was caught mid-chant and thrown against his comrades. Armor buckled; horses screamed.
The fight became chaos , a blur of iron, fur, and light.
When it ended, the ground was a mire of broken metal, guts and blood.
Only one knight remained, crawling backward, helm shattered, eyes wide with disbelief.
He lifted a trembling hand toward the creature.
"Monster," he rasped
Jrogathrax loomed over him. "So you remember the word," the beast rumbled.
his voice deep, rough, almost human.
"But not the oath your fathers swore."
The knight's lips moved soundlessly.
"You hunted what you did not understand,"
The werewolf said
, pressing a claw to the man's chest.
"You feared the moon's gift."
And with that, he slowly drove the claw through armor and heart, pinning the corpse to the frozen soil.
He looked at the battlefield, at the ruin of men and magic,
and felt the hollow within him widen.
There was no triumph, only the faint echo of a promise broken long ago.
The wind carried voices through the smoke: survivors in the town, soldiers marching from the next valley.
The hunt would not end. It never did for him as he was the first and now the last.
Jrogathrax turned his gaze to the eastern peaks, where the ruins of Ardent Keep waited,the place where his kind had been betrayed, where the first sunfire had fallen.
Something in him whispered that the truth he sought still lingered there, buried under stone and lies.
He began to walk, each step leaving deep scars in the earth.
Behind him, the ward-fires flickered out one by one.
End of Chapter II.