Fenrir Moonscar's Arc

Chapter 7 of 8

The crypt held old air and colder stone. Fenrir stepped inside with the pup close at his heel. Frost followed, her brother's cracked pendant still warm in her paw. The birthmark on his chest had gone quiet. He thought the hard part was over. Then a low growl rolled from the dark. The scarred white direwolf stood between him and the far wall. It had torn the wraith apart to save them. Now its eyes were hard. It had let him pass the door, but it would not let him pass itself. Its pale hide was crossed with old wounds. It fixed on his chest, on the mark, and it waited. "It saved us," Frost said. "Why block us now?" Fenrir smelled the beast. No fear. No rage. Something older, like the elder who had bowed to him long ago. Reverence and grief, mixed. "It guards this place," he said. "It wants proof. The mark on my skin is not enough. It has seen fakes die here." He showed the direwolf his chest. The crescent lay plain in his fur. The beast did not move. Anyone could wear a scar. Frost's brother had worn one, and it had killed him. The direwolf needed more than skin. Fenrir had nothing else. He turned in the dark room, searching. The walls held carved crescents, cut and joined, over and over. In the far corner light caught something set in stone. He crossed to it. A shard rested there, curved like a moon, etched with strange marks. A small moon crest glowed soft at its center. The marks on the shard matched the marks that ringed his birthmark. The same symbols, in the same order. He lifted the shard. It fit against his chest like a missing half. The crescent on his skin flared bright. The glow ran into the shard, and the shard answered, brighter still. The direwolf lowered its head. The growl stopped. It stepped back from the wall and lay down, and it bared its throat to him. The test was met. Not by his skin, but by the shard his blood woke. "You proved it," Frost whispered. She stared at the shard. "That's what he never had. The pendant only opened the door. This does more." Fenrir held the glowing shard and read the marks along its edge. They were not directions now. They were words he could almost understand, a line of names, a bloodline written in old script. His name was meant to sit at its end. But the shard was broken. A jagged edge cut across the crest, and pieces were gone. The story it told stopped short. Whatever the crescent truly meant, the answer was split apart, and the rest of it lay somewhere he had not yet reached.