The moon had always whispered to her.
Even before she could walk, Lyra remembered its call—a hum beneath her skin, a quiet rhythm that danced with her heartbeat. No one else in the royal court seemed to hear it, not even her father, King Thorne, whose bloodline had ruled the northern territories of Varellia for centuries. They shifted with the rise of the full moon, as all wolves did, but they did not listen. They did not feel.
Lyra did.
Born on the night of a blood eclipse, her arrival had been marked by omens. The high priestess had fainted during the royal birthing ceremony, and the silver runes etched into the temple walls had burned red. Some whispered that her birth fulfilled an ancient prophecy—one the elders refused to speak of. Her mother had died moments after naming her, a soft cry echoing on her lips: "Lyra… the moon's child."
She was raised among gold and silk, trained in courtly manners, warcraft, and diplomacy. Yet despite the power in her veins, the kingdom's wolves treated her like a phantom—beautiful, untouchable, strange. The other royal-blooded shifted with fur of iron and fangs of stone. But Lyra's transformation was something else entirely. Her wolf form shimmered with streaks of silver and blue, her eyes glowing like twin stars. They feared her. They called her gifted. They called her cursed.
She didn't know which one was true.
Only one person had ever treated her like something more than a mystery to be solved—Seer Myra, the ancient oracle who served in the moon tower. Blind, but always seeing, Myra had known things about Lyra no one else could. She taught her how to listen to the wind, to read the runes, to understand the language of her blood.
"Your path is written in the shadows," Myra had told her once, voice raspy and distant. "And your kind waits where you least expect them. But beware, little moon—truth comes with a cost."
Lyra hadn't understood those words. Not until the night the seer vanished.
It had been just days ago. A storm rolled in from the east, howling like a pack of banshees. Lightning cracked across the sky, and the tower where Myra lived had gone dark. When the guards forced open the doors at Lyra's command, all they found was a scattering of feathers, an overturned bowl of ashes, and a single rune painted on the stone wall: a crescent moon split in two.
And the note—addressed to her.
> "Seek the forgotten. The blood sings among the silent. Trust the fire in your bones."
No one could explain the message. Her father declared Myra a traitor. Others said she was taken by dark magic. But Lyra knew better. Myra had gone willingly—left her a trail. A mystery. A map written in riddles.
And so Lyra made her choice.
On the eve of the full moon, cloaked in travel leathers and shadow, she slipped through the palace gates under the guise of darkness. No royal escort. No guards. Only a blade at her hip and a wolf sleeping beneath her skin. Her path led west, toward the borderlands—toward the land of the common wolves.
She had to find them. Whoever they were.
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