It began as a feeling.
There was no sound nor command.
Just a quiet certainty that settled into bones that had spent twenty years pretending to belong somewhere else.
And one by one, across the lands, wolves stopped what they were doing.
In a small mountain village on the edge of Vale territory, a man paused over the forge fire.
The hammer hung above the anvil.
For a long moment he didn’t move.
His apprentice looked up from the coal pit.
“Master?”
The man slowly lowered the hammer.
Something deep inside his chest had begun to stir. Not pain. Not fear.
Recognition.
A warmth he had not felt since childhood.
He looked toward the distant forest line where the mountains darkened the horizon.
Without a word, he removed the thick leather apron from around his shoulders and set it on
