The ash fell thicker now, coating the Silver Moon lawn in a suffocating blanket of gray.
The temperature didn't just drop; the air itself felt hollowed out, drained of all life and warmth. The Lycan warriors stood shoulder-to-shoulder, their massive silver broadswords drawn, forming an impenetrable wall of steel around the porch. But steel was meant for flesh and bone.
What crawled out of the dark tree line had neither.
They looked like wolves, but they were massive, jagged constructs of swirling, pitch-black mist. Their eyes burned with a sickening, toxic green light, and their claws scraped against the frozen ground with the sound of screeching metal. Shadow demons. Soulless, hungry, and driven entirely by Morana’s dark magic.
"Hold the line!" Cassius roared, his scarred face illumin
