Chapter Five: Echoes Beneath the Snow

That night, Elara couldn’t sleep.

After the attack, she had helped Kael back to the cabin, her arm wrapped around his shoulders despite his towering size. He hadn’t resisted. For the first time, he let her lead.

Now, hours later, he lay curled by the fireplace, the wound along his side cleaned and stitched as best as she could manage. His breathing had steadied, but he hadn’t stirred.

She sat cross-legged across from him, the flames flickering shadows across his fur. The sketchbook rested on her knees, but she hadn’t drawn a single line.

Her thoughts were stuck on the name.

Kael.

The way he had looked at her — like he was waiting for her to remember.

And now, something inside her pulsed with that name. Like it wasn’t just a word, but a key. A thread connecting past to present.

Eventually, exhaustion took her. She fell asleep sitting up, one hand still on the sketchbook.

And she dreamed again.

---

The sky was red with fire.

She stood at the edge of a crumbling stone courtyard, vines crawling up broken pillars, their blossoms glowing faintly under a moon that looked cracked.

People were shouting — not out of fear, but in ritual. A chant in a language she didn’t recognize, yet somehow understood.

In the center of the circle stood Kael.

Not as a wolf.

As a man.

Tall, wild-eyed, shirtless under a fur-lined cloak, arms bound in silver chains. His skin was streaked with ash and cuts, and across his chest, a rune pulsed like it was alive.

“Elara,” he said, voice hoarse, but calm. “You don’t have to do this.”

She stepped forward — not herself, but someone wearing her face. Older. Hardened. A priestess, maybe. Or something worse.

Tears fell down her cheeks, but her hands didn’t tremble. She held a blade. Thin. Moon-shaped.

“I have no choice,” she whispered.

“I’d rather die than forget you,” Kael said.

“Then you’ll live,” she replied. “But as something else.”

Lightning cracked across the sky. The ground beneath him began to glow — not warm, golden light, but harsh, white, and cold. He roared as the rune burned into his skin. His body twisted, bones shifting, reshaping.

And her own scream tore through the dream as he fell to his knees, mid-transformation, eyes locked on hers in betrayal and heartbreak.

---

Elara bolted upright, gasping.

The fire had died again. But she wasn’t cold.

She looked to the hearth. Kael was still asleep, breathing steady, his fur rising and falling in rhythm.

Except now… she saw something different.

A mark.

On his shoulder, where the fur thinned, a faint pattern curled across his skin — the same shape as the rune from the dream. Almost invisible unless you knew where to look.

Her heart pounded.

It wasn’t just a dream. It was a memory.

Her memory.

But how?

She rose carefully, not wanting to wake him, and crossed to her worktable. She flipped open the sketchbook to a fresh page and began to draw, faster than she ever had — the courtyard, the pillars, the symbols in the stone.

When she was done, she stared at the image with trembling hands.

She had never been there.

But she had.

Kael stirred behind her, a soft whine in his throat like he was dreaming too. She turned toward him.

“I did this to you,” she whispered.

Not as a question.

As a truth.

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