The cold air of early morning whispered through the broken arches and crumbling stones of the ancient ruins, just outside the grand city of Metreon Star. The old place had once been a shrine of knowledge—now it was no more than a graveyard of stone and secrets. Wulf and Isolde tread silently, their steps deliberate and synchronized, eyes scanning every corner of the ruin.
A foul aura lingered in the air, the kind that made even the bravest guards uneasy. And there, seated casually atop a cracked slab of granite like it were a throne, was Zedrich.
He looked unbothered. One leg propped lazily over the other, hands resting behind his head as though he were simply enjoying the morning breeze. His hair flowed down like a blackened river, and his smile was twisted with deranged delight.
"So," Zedrich's voice slithered out into the open, smooth and venomous, "they send the bloodhounds back to me."
