Fenrir Moonscar's Arc

Chapter 6 of 8

The lower path sank into the dark. The misty wolf led them past broken stone. Then Frost gasped. She pulled her brother's cracked pendant from her belt. The white stone glowed hot in her paw, brighter with every step down. "Fenrir, it's burning," she said. "Like your mark did at the door." He stopped. He did not know if the pendant kept them safe or marked them the same way it had marked her brother for death. "Drop it if it burns you," Fenrir said. "No." Frost closed her paw tight. "He carried it here. I will too." The pendant's light spilled ahead. It struck a wall of dark stone. A door stood there, tall and sealed. Old carvings ringed a crest at its center. Fenrir stepped close. The birthmark on his chest warmed, then matched the pendant's glow. Both answered the same door. "This is why the mark burns," he said. "Not for the shrine. For this." Something moved in the black behind them. The pup pressed against Fenrir's leg and whined. A shape drifted from the shadows, lean and dark, fur trailing like smoke. Green eyes fixed on the glowing pendant. The wraith wolf crept toward the light in Frost's paw. "It wants the pendant," Frost said. Her voice stayed low. "The heat drew it." The wraith lunged. Fenrir shoved Frost behind him and swung. His claws passed through smoke. The thing had no body to strike. It circled, hungry, and darted at the glowing stone again. Then the misty guardian threw back its head. A second beast answered from the dark. It came heavy and fast, a white direwolf, huge and scarred, old wounds crossing its pale hide. It hit the wraith and drove it down. Smoke and snarls filled the passage. The white beast fought like the shadow had killed its kin. The direwolf tore the wraith apart. The dark shape thinned, scattered, and was gone. The great wolf turned to Fenrir. Its eyes dropped to the burning mark on his chest. It did not attack. It stepped aside from the sealed door and waited. "It knows the mark," Fenrir said. "It let us pass." He pressed his glowing chest to the crest on the door. Frost pressed the pendant beside it. Stone ground against stone. The door split and swung inward on a cold, still crypt. Carvings covered every wall, the same crescent, cut and joined, cut and joined. Frost stared into the dark room. "He never reached this," she said. "The door took him first." "We reached it," Fenrir said. He held the pup close and stepped inside. The mark on his chest went quiet at last. Not a trap now. A key. Whatever the crescent truly meant, the answer waited in the crypt his blood had opened.