THE ANCESTORS VERDICTS
THE ANCESTORS VERDICTS
The second trial began at midnight—when the veil between the living and the dead was thinnest, when wolves whispered prayers and buried their doubts beneath tradition.
Trial Two: The Judgment of the Ancestors.
It was the most dangerous of the three trials, because in this one… the dead spoke.
Lucan entered the inner sanctum alone, as was custom. A circle of twelve obsidian totems flickered with cold flame, each representing a past Alpha of Fenrir blood.
The walls were carved with ancient glyphs, no lies could be told here, no masks could be worn only truth and soul remained.
He knelt before the Circle of Flames.
The spirit of Alpha Reynar intoned from the ether, his voice both wind and thunder. “Lucan, descendant of the broken line… You claim the right of legacy, but your blood remembers more than your tongue speaks. We will see who you truly are.” The flames turned black.
Images burst into the air—violent, twisting visions, Lucan’s hands are choking another wolf. His voice, whispering dark promises to rogues in the old mountains. A binding pact with a Wyrm-born seer and worst of all—an image of him standing above a bloodstained cradle, his hand hovering with hesitation… over a child with silver-violet eyes.
The heir.
Gasps echoed outside the chamber, the vision was visible to all through the fire basin in the courtyard, even’s knees buckled slightly at the sight.
Michael surged forward, snarling. “He tried to kill our son.”
But Rowan held out a hand. “We must let the trial finish.”
Inside, Lucan stood, unshaken. The flames curled toward him like hungry wolves.
“I never denied my darkness,” he said, his voice resonant. “I was forged in it. My bond with Moonstone blood is not pure—but neither is any Alpha's path. I was the blade they abandoned in the wild—and I sharpened myself on survival.”
“Do the ancestors accept this truth?” one of the spirits asked.
The fire crackled, then… went white. A long silence followed.
Then the answer came—not as words, but as a single rune, glowing in the air:
“TESTED.” Not "Approved." Not "Denied." But “Tested.”
It meant he passed… barely and yet, it gave him the right to continue.
Outside, the courtyard was chaos. Michael paced like a caged beast, the ancient law forbidding him from interfering. Fiona stood like stone, but her wolf was howling beneath her skin. Their son sat between them, fists clenched.
“I saw him,” the boy whispered. “He was going to hurt me.”
Fiona knelt in front of him, hands on his shoulders. “He can’t know you’re stronger, you have us and I swear to you, if he so much as breathes near you again, I’ll burn the law to ash myself.”
Michael’s voice was iron. “Lucan won’t survive the third trial. I’ll see to it.”
But elsewhere, in the shadows beyond the pack’s heart… Lucan was preparing something more. He stood atop the northern ridge, the wind whipping his coat. Before him knelt six cloaked wolves—rogue-born, magic-touched, loyal only to him.
“You saw what they fear,” Lucan said calmly. “They fear me because I see the truth, that boy is not meant to lead wolves, He is meant to change them and when things change too much… they break.”
He raised a bone-carved totem from beneath his cloak. It pulsed with crimson light.
“I don’t need to win the third trial,” he said.
“I just need to make sure he doesn’t.”
Back at the Moonstone stronghold. Fiona stood in the war room again, this time with Lysandra, Michael, and a small circle of their most loyal guards.
“The runes said he was tested,” Lysandra murmured, her fingers moving over ancient symbols. “That’s a warning, the ancestors aren’t blind to his ambition but something’s interfering, I felt the pull of binding magic.”
Michael’s fist hit the table. “Then we break it.”
Fiona’s voice cut through the tension. “We need to end this before the final trial.”
Lysandra looked at her. “That would be against tradition.”
“Tradition can go to hell,” Fiona growled.
That night, alone in his chamber, the young heir woke with a scream. Flames danced at his fingertips, his window frosted over. But the scariest part was the voice he heard in his dreams—Lucan’s voice, whispering from behind some veil:
“You think you’ve won their love, little prince but I’ve already claimed their fear, and fear rules longer than any crown.”
TBC