Night had long since fallen over Duskwind Hollow, but the fires in the main lodge still burned.
Elder Mo Jian stood alone in the record chamber, fingers tracing the edge of a scroll as old as the clan itself. His lips moved silently, repeating the name of the spirit again and again like a prayer or a curse.
"Duskwither… Moonfang…"
Behind him, the door creaked open.
"You called for me?" came Li Wei's voice.
Mo Jian turned slowly, eyes heavy with thought. "Your son's awakening… it's not something I've ever seen. Neither in our scrolls nor in the Spirit Codex from the sects."
Li Wei nodded. "I know."
"It's not just rare. It's alien."
"He is my son. And he bears a wolf spirit, like our bloodline demands."
Mo Jian frowned. "Shadow and moonlight are not natural traits for the Bronze-Back line. If the elders from the Eastwind Pavilion come asking—"
"Let them ask," Li Wei interrupted, calm but firm. "We owe them no explanations."
"Lin Qiu will push for one."
"Lin Qiu can choke on his pride."
Mo Jian gave a dry chuckle, but his expression didn't soften. "This isn't about pride. This is about power. And power must be claimed carefully."
"Then you should be happy," Li Wei replied. "My son is cautious. Cold. He won't waste this."
The elder gave him a long look. "He's not like you."
"No," Wei said. "He's something else."
Elsewhere, in the old training yard behind the family lodge, Li Rong stood beneath the snow-heavy pine tree where he used to sit as a child. His cloak hung loosely over his shoulders, and his breath clouded the air in shallow wisps.
He wasn't training. Not yet.
He was listening.
To the wind. To the silence between it. To the soft scrape of claws in his mind—his spirit beast, still half-asleep inside him, pacing in the dark corners of his soul.
The Duskwither Moonfang Wolf wasn't violent. It was watchful. Still. It didn't snarl or howl like Lin Feng's flashy Bronze-Back projection. It lurked, tail low, head lowered, eyes silver and endless.
It felt… right.
And it made others uneasy.
Good.
By morning, the rumors had already taken root.
"I heard he awakened a cursed wolf."
"No—something born from a spirit beast that was hunted too long in the dark."
"My father says it's a shadow clone. A false spirit."
"He's dangerous. I saw it in his eyes."
Li Rong didn't answer any of them. He passed through the village like a ghost in daylight—acknowledging no one, watching everything.
At the clan meeting hall, the elders convened. Lin Qiu sat at the head of one side of the long table, her robes immaculate, hair oiled and tied back tight. Across from him, Mo Jian sat with a scroll open before him and no smile in his eyes.
"It's simple," Lin Qiu began. "we document the anomaly, alert the sects, and recommend a binding talisman for observation."
"You want to put a seal on a child," Mo Jian said evenly.
"A child with a mutated, unknown spirit," Lin Qiu replied.
Mo Jian didn't respond. He only looked at Lin Qiu like one might study a snake mid-shed.
"We cannot afford chaos," Lin Qiu added. "Li Rong is… odd."
"Oddness is not a crime."
"His grandfather," Lin Qiu said with a smug smile, "was a warrior. His father, the same. But the boy? He's something different."
Mo Jian nodded slowly. "Yes. He is."
That evening, Li Wei found his son kneeling in the practice courtyard, tracing silent footwork patterns in the snow. No weapon. No sound. Just movement.
"You're not afraid of them, are you?" Wei asked.
"No," Li Rong said.
"They're afraid of you."
"I know."
Wei stepped closer. "What will you do with that?"
Li Rong looked up. His eyes, so dark they bordered on black, held no flicker of boyhood in them anymore.
"Let them watch," he said. "I'll give them something worth fearing."
Wei didn't speak for a long moment. Then, slowly, he smiled.
"Your grandfather would've liked you," he said.
Li Rong stood. "I don't need them to like me."
"No," Wei said, "but it's good that I do."
Later that night, in the silence of his room, Li Rong sat cross-legged beneath the thin glow of a spirit lantern. A single scroll lay before him—copied by his mother's hand, an old text on rare spirit mutations.
Most of it was irrelevant.
But one passage held his focus:
"The wolf that howls gathers kin.But the wolf that does not howl—is the one the others follow when the blood is thickest."
He whispered it once aloud, then closed his eyes.
In the back of his mind, his spirit stirred.
The Moonfang opened silver eyes and blinked once.
They were still learning each other.
But they understood one thing already:
They were not meant to be seen.
They were meant to be remembered.