The old church stood at the farthest edge of town, where the pavement turned to gravel and the forest grew too thick to ignore.
No one came here anymore.
No one but him.
Calen stopped at the rusted gate, staring up at the peeling white facade. Moonlight made the stained-glass windows gleam in odd, broken colors. There was no sound but wind and pine needles shifting like whispers.
> Rowan said he lives here?
A Seer.
Calen wasn’t sure what that meant anymore. He didn’t believe in prophecy. Or destiny. Or bloodlines that could predict your soul.
And yet… the air here felt different.
Like something older than wolves watched from behind the trees.
---
The door creaked open before he even knocked.
Standing in the entryway was a boy—barely older than Calen, maybe nineteen—with a long black coat, pale skin, and white-blond hair that spilled over one eye. His expression was blank. Not unkind—just unreadable.
> “You’re late,” he said simply.
Calen frowned. “We didn’t make an appointment.”
“You were still late,” the boy said. “Come in.”
---
Inside, the church was half-shadow, half relic. Dust floated through amber light from stained-glass moons. Candles flickered on stone altars. Rows of long-abandoned pews stretched toward a space that no longer hosted gods.
The boy moved like he belonged here—quiet, precise.
Calen followed him past the altar into a side room. Books lined the walls, most bound in cracked leather and symbols Calen couldn’t read. A circle had been painted on the floor in ash and wolf’s blood.
The boy gestured for him to sit inside it.
Calen hesitated. “And you are?”
“Kai. The last Seer of Graybridge.”
“And what is a Seer exactly?”
Kai knelt outside the circle, dragging a small dagger across his own palm without flinching. Blood dripped into a bowl carved from blackstone.
“I see what others cannot,” he said softly. “I see what your wolf hides from you.”
---
Calen sat.
The moment he crossed into the circle, the temperature dropped.
Something ancient and deep stirred beneath his skin.
Kai’s gaze sharpened. He dipped two fingers into his own blood and drew a crescent mark onto Calen’s forehead.
Calen’s breath hitched.
He wasn’t in the room anymore.
---
The forest surrounded him. But not the real one. Not the Graybridge he knew. This one was darker. Wilder. Trees stretched toward a sky that bled silver. The moon was massive, low, and angry.
In the distance, wolves circled something—no, someone—kneeling in the mud. A boy.
Him.
Naked, shivering, hands stained with something red.
They weren’t snarling. They were bowing.
To him.
---
Calen gasped and jerked back into his body.
He was on the floor. Kai’s hand gripped his shoulder tightly, eyes wide with something close to awe.
“You’re not just marked,” Kai whispered. “You’re chosen.”
Calen’s chest heaved.
“Chosen for what?”
Kai stood slowly. He looked at Calen like someone trying to understand a weapon before it goes off.
> “There hasn’t been one like you in a hundred years,” he murmured.
“A wolf born of two worlds. Shadow and moonlight.”
Calen stared at him. “What the hell does that mean?”
“It means,” Kai said carefully, “if you stay in this town, you will either become a god… or you will get everyone killed.”
---
Calen rose to his feet, body shaking. “No. No, I don’t believe in fate, or prophecies, or—”
Kai stepped closer.
“It doesn’t matter what you believe. Your blood believes. Your wolf believes. And the others? They’re starting to feel it.”
He paused.
> “Especially him.”
Calen’s breath caught. “Rowan?”
Kai nodded once.
“Rowan was born to follow rules. But you… you were born to break them.”
---
When Calen left the church, the wind had stilled. The trees were too quiet.
Something ancient inside him pulsed.
It wasn’t fear.
It was recognition.
...****************...
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