Prologue.
PROLOGUE
Three centuries before King Damian ever drew breath, the dark pine forests of the Northern Ridge ran heavy with crimson blood. It was the age of the Blood Reckoning—an era when the iron-willed Alphas of the Grivendel lineage sought to wipe out the shadow coven of the Eldress witches once and for all.
On a night when the moon hid its face behind choked, storm-heavy clouds, the final battle reached its bitter, merciless conclusion. The air hummed with the acrid scent of ozone, burnt ash, and fresh metallic blood. High upon the jagged stone cliffs overlooking the valley, King Ahsivel—the grand ancestor of the wolf throne—stood victorious among the fallen. His black steel armor was coated in mud and gore, his chest heaving as he wiped his heavy broadsword clean against the tunic of a slain commander.
At his feet knelt the last surviving Eldress.
Her frame was frail, wrapped in torn, soot-stained robes, but her black eyes burned with a terrifying, unyielding defiance. Blood trickled from her cracked lips onto the freezing stone, yet she did not bow her head. Even as Ahsivel’s elite guards pressed the cold edges of their silver spears against her throat, the old woman let out a low, rasping laugh that echoed unnaturally through the weeping pines.
"You cut down my sisters, conqueror," she hissed, her voice sounding like dry leaves scraping over a open grave. "You take our mountains, slay our kin, and build your kingdom upon our bones. But you will never hold peace in your blood."
King Ahsivel raised his heavy blade, his cold golden eyes narrowing without a trace of mercy. "Your covens are dead, witch. Your magic ends tonight."
"My magic lives in the marrow of your line!" the Eldress shrieked, her voice rising into a deafening, unnatural howl that made the ground beneath their boots shake.
She thrust her bleeding hands into the mud, pulling upon the dark, forbidden roots of the earth. A violent, icy gale whipped through the clearing, flattening the torch flames and turning the falling rain into jagged shards of ice.
"Hear me, great Alpha!" she spat, her eyes flaring a blinding, unnatural crimson as dark veins coursed across her pale skin. "I lay a mark upon your bloodline that no sword can slice and no shield can block! From this night forth, every sovereign born to the Grivendel throne shall carry a shadow in his chest. A cold frost that eats away at his soul, leaving him hollow, ruthless, and devoid of peace."
Ahsivel stepped forward to strike her down, but an invisible wall of oppressive, suffocating pressure slammed into his chest, forcing the grand King back a step.
"On the night of your heirs' thirtieth year," the witch screamed into the storm, her voice multiplying as if a thousand spirits spoke through her lips, "the beast within shall break its chains! The blood in their veins shall turn to molten iron, and the shadow will consume their minds, turning them into mindless, ravenous monsters who will lay waste to the very kingdom you died to build!"
The guards gasped, panic breaking through their battle-hardened ranks as the sky shattered with black lightning.
"Is there no reprieve?" Ahsivel roared above the howling wind, his heart seizing with an ancient, instinctual dread.
The Eldress smiled, a terrifying sight of blood-stained teeth. "Only one key will break the lock. A soul bound by the old fates—a heart that surrenders to him not out of fear, duty, or royal decree, but freely given in the dark. Bring him true love before his thirtieth winter ends, or watch your grand bloodline tear itself to pieces!"
With a final, shattering scream, the witch's body dissolved into a cloud of black ash, swept away into the freezing gale.
That night, beneath the dark canopy of the forest, the curse took root. And three hundred years later, inside the silent nurseries of the royal keep, King Damian took his first breath—born with a shadow sleeping silently in his blood, counting down every second to his thirtieth year.
