Luna Greyfoot's Arc

Chapter 1 of 2

Luna Greyfoot had not seen her pack in nine days, and the forest kept lying to her. Every ridge looked like the ridge that led home. She was wolf kin, born to run beside her family, but now she ran alone. Snow packed her boots. Her fur was matted with cold. She followed old marks in the dirt, sure they were her mother's tracks, and each time they thinned into nothing. She stopped at a frozen stream and knelt to drink. Her reflection showed a thin face and hollow eyes. She had traded her good knife for dried meat three days ago. Now the meat was gone. She had walked in a circle again. The same broken pine leaned over the water, marked by her own claw. She pressed her forehead to the ice and let herself shake. Then she smelled smoke, faint and old. She rose and followed it uphill. The trees opened onto a clearing, and there it stood: an ancient stone altar, taller than her, crusted with moss. Red lines wound across its surface like veins. Carved symbols ringed a shallow basin at its center. She had heard the elders speak of such a place. A bloodline altar. It could tell you whether your kin still lived. Luna climbed the last steps. Her legs trembled. She knew the ritual by heart, though she had never dared it. You gave the stone your blood. If your pack breathed somewhere, the stone answered. If not, it stayed dark, and you learned you were the last. She hesitated. To ask was to risk the worst answer. But wandering blind had nearly killed her. She needed to know which way to run, or whether to run at all. She bit her thumb and pressed it to the basin. Blood dripped into the worn channel. The red lines drank it, and the carved symbols began to glow a cold blue. Heat rose from the stone. Luna held her breath. The glow pulled to one side, all the light bending toward the north ridge. The channels pointed like a hundred arrows. Her pack lived. They were near, and the altar showed the way. Luna laughed, a broken sound. She was already turning to run when a low growl froze her. A small wolf crouched on the altar's far edge. Two tails lashed behind it. Thin wings, colored like oil on water, spread from its back. Its eyes fixed on her bleeding thumb. It bared its teeth, and she understood. The altar's blood had called it. The elders warned of such creatures, that its bite could twist a wolf kin into something else. The winged wolf gathered itself to spring. Luna had no knife now. Behind her lay the path to her pack. Between her and that path stood the thing on the stone. She raised her fists and set her feet. She had not survived nine days to die one ridge from home.