MAXIMUS:
The scream split the dawn.
I was already awake when it came, half dressed, half lost in thought, but that sound… it wasn’t something you could ever forget. It wasn’t just grief. It was the kind of sound that makes wolves stir in their sleep, the kind that tells you blood has been spilled. By the time I reached the courtyard, the pack already smelled of death. Two elders. Throats slit, eyes wide open, their bodies laid in the dirt like a message written in flesh. Their families wept beside them. The healers whispered prayers, and the air carried that faint metallic scent that sticks to the soul.
I crouched beside the corpses, my fingers brushing the edge of a torn sleeve, the symbol of the council, now darkened with blood.
“How?” I muttered.
No answer. Just the stillness of
