Chapter 6: First Blood

Chapter 6: First Blood

War did not creep into the Blackwood territory; it descended. Marius’s chilling promise left a poisonous silence in its wake, but it was a silence that lasted only a few heartbeats. Kael moved first, his voice a low, commanding rumble that cut through the fear.

“To the perimeter! Sentries, double your watch! Elspeth, get the children and the elders to the deep caves. Now!”

The pack, a single organism of instinct and loyalty, moved as one. There was no panic, only a grim, focused energy. They had been fighting for survival their entire lives; this was just a new, more terrifying face of the same ancient enemy.

Elara’s goal was no longer to be accepted; it was to protect the people who had shown her the meaning of home. As the warriors sharpened their blades and checked their arrowheads, she found Kael in the center of the camp, standing over a crude map etched into a large, flat stone.

“They will come before the moon is at its zenith,” she said, her voice steady despite the tremor in her hands. “They will not wait for the advantage of full darkness. My father is arrogant. He wants a display, not just a victory.”

Kael looked up, his amber eyes burning with a fierce, controlled light. He didn't question her. He simply nodded. “Tell me how they fight.”

This was the moment their partnership was forged, not in a silent nod of acceptance, but in the crucible of impending battle. The obstacle was the legendary Crimson Legion, the Ascendancy’s elite guard. They were disciplined, immortal, and trained for centuries in the art of slaughter. Against them, the pack’s ferocious but chaotic strength could be shattered.

“They use a phalanx formation,” Elara explained, her finger tracing lines on the stone map. “Shields forward, spears set. They advance slowly, an unstoppable wall of steel designed to break a charge. They will expect you to rush them head-on, to throw your numbers at them in a wave of fury. They will cut you to pieces.”

Kael’s jaw tightened. “It is the way of the wolf. We overwhelm.”

“And they are counting on it,” she countered, her crimson eyes meeting his. “But you are not just wolves. You are hunters. You know this land. They do not. Their discipline is their strength, but it is also their weakness. They are rigid. Unflinching. Break their formation, and you break them.”

For the next hour, they worked. A vampire princess and a werewolf Alpha, bending over a map of stone, their minds meeting in a place beyond ancient hatred. She gave him the secrets of her people: the Legion’s reliance on their commanders’ signals, their vulnerability to attacks from above, their disdain for guerilla tactics which they considered dishonorable. He took her cold, clinical knowledge and translated it into the savage poetry of the hunt. Traps were set in the narrow passes. Archers were positioned on the high ridges of the ravine. The strongest fighters were not placed at the front, but held in reserve, ready to strike the flanks the moment the Legion’s formation was compromised.

As the last preparations were made, Lyra, the mother of the boy Elara had healed, approached her. She pressed a leather-wrapped blade into Elara’s hand. It was simple, unadorned, but balanced and lethally sharp.

“No one here expects you to fight,” Lyra said softly, her eyes filled with a fierce sincerity. “But you are one of us now. And we do not leave our own defenseless.”

The weight of the knife in her hand was heavier than any scepter. It was a gift of trust. A symbol of belonging.

The attack came as she predicted. A silent, crimson tide flowed out of the blighted woods. At its head, seated upon a nightmare of a black steed with glowing red eyes, was Lord Valerius Vance. He looked regal and utterly bored, an emperor surveying an anthill he was about to crush. The Crimson Legion advanced behind him, a perfect, synchronized machine of death, their red armor seeming to drink the last light of dusk.

The first of the traps sprang. A log, weighted with sharpened stones, swung down from the ravine wall, crashing into the front line with a sickening crunch of metal and bone. It barely slowed them. They stepped over their fallen comrades, the shield wall reforming instantly.

Arrows rained down, and vampires fell, but still the Legion advanced. They reached the base of the settlement, their measured steps a death knell on the hard earth. The front line of werewolves, following Kael’s orders, met them not with a full charge, but with a series of feinting, harassing attacks, drawing the Legion’s focus.

Elara stood beside Kael on a rocky outcrop overlooking the main battle. “Now,” she breathed.

Kael threw his head back and let out a howl that was not a sound of rage, but a command. It echoed through the ravine, a signal. From hidden crevices and side tunnels, the rest of the pack exploded onto the Legion’s exposed flanks. Chaos erupted. The rigid phalanx, designed for a frontal assault, faltered. Shields were turned, spears were re-angled. For a fatal second, their perfect discipline fractured.

It was the opening they needed.

With a roar, Kael launched himself from the outcrop, shifting into his massive dire wolf form in mid-air. He landed among them like a black thunderbolt, a whirlwind of claws and teeth that tore through armor and flesh. The rest of the werewolves surged forward, and the battle dissolved into a maelstrom of desperate, close-quarters combat.

Elara was not far behind. She moved with a dancer’s grace, the simple knife in one hand, the other glowing with a pulsating red energy. She was not a brawler like the werewolves. She was a scalpel. A vampire tried to grab her, and she sent a pulse of her energy into his chest. He screamed, clutching his head as his mind was filled with phantom pain, giving her the opening to drive her blade under his chin. She saw a werewolf cornered by two Legionnaires and threw a shimmering barrier of red light between them, buying him precious seconds to recover.

She found herself near Kael, the massive wolf a blur of black fur at her side. They fell into a natural, deadly rhythm. He was the storm; she was the lightning. He broke their bodies; she shattered their minds and defenses. They fought back-to-back, an impossible, unstoppable union of two warring worlds, protecting each other, dominating the battlefield.

They were winning. The disciplined Legion, broken and surrounded, was falling into disarray. The werewolves, fighting with the desperation of a people defending their homes, were pushing them back. They had won the first skirmish.

But the battle wasn't over. A cold, immense pressure descended on the battlefield, silencing the cries of pain and fury. Lord Valerius dismounted his steed, moving through the combat with an unhurried, terrifying grace. He didn't seem to fight so much as simply will his opponents to die. A werewolf who charged him was swatted aside like a fly, his neck snapping with an audible crack.

Then, his cold, crimson eyes found her. He ignored Kael, ignored the raging battle. He walked toward her, and the combatants, both vampire and werewolf, scrambled to get out of his path.

Elara stood her ground, her heart a cold stone in her chest. Kael, back in his human form, moved to stand beside her, his chest heaving, his body covered in blood—none of it his own.

“Daughter,” Valerius said, his voice calm, yet carrying over the din. He stopped twenty feet away, a picture of deadly elegance. “Look at the chaos you have wrought. Look at this pointless, messy bloodshed. All because you chose these beasts over your own blood.”

“They are more my blood than you have ever been,” Elara shot back, her voice shaking with a fury born of newfound conviction. “They are a family. You are just a tyrant.”

Valerius actually smiled, a thin, cruel slash of his lips. It was a smile of pity, of profound disappointment. "Family? You speak of things you do not understand. You think your compassion, your… gift… is your own rebellion? You think this sentimentality is a strength you discovered for yourself?"

He took a slow step closer, his eyes locking onto hers, drawing her into the cold, dark depths of his power. “How little you know.”

This was the turning point. The air grew still around them.

“Your mother was much like you,” Valerius continued, his voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper. “So soft. So full of a pointless, bleeding empathy. She also possessed a rare and vibrant form of blood magic. A magic that could give, not just take. She thought it was a blessing. She thought she could use it to bridge the gap between our kind and the lesser races.”

He paused, letting the words sink in, twisting the knife of memory in Elara’s heart. Her mother’s death had always been a mystery, a sickness that no one spoke of.

“She tried to use her gift to heal a werewolf elder, a rabid dog dying of a wasting plague,” Valerius said, his voice dripping with ancient disgust. “An act of supreme foolishness. An act of treason. She believed, as you do, that her power should be used to shield the weak.”

He took one final step, his presence an overwhelming wave of cold malice. Elara felt nailed to the spot, every muscle frozen, as he delivered the final, devastating truth.

“I did not kill her because she was a traitor, Elara,” he said, his voice a chilling, intimate whisper that shattered her world. “I killed her to show her the true purpose of power. The same lesson you are about to learn. Her weakness, her compassion, her magic… it does not come from our bloodline. It came from hers. And you are, after all, your mother's daughter.”