Chapter 160: The Blackmoon lore...
[ Somewhere far from the Old World - somewhere closer home yet too far off ]
Beneath the water’s restless churn, hidden from moonlight, stars, and the howls of the living world above, the waterlogged cave groaned like a beast in slumber.
It was more like an air pocket than an actual cave.
The walls dripped with condensation. Every now and then, a tremor of waves lashed above the surface of the stone ceiling, like muffled thunder rolling far away.
In the deepest corner of this tucked away underworld, Beta Dax Blackmoon sat alone.
His fingers moved steadily, dragging the whetstone across the edge of his blade. Metal rasped softly. Its rhythmic scrape kept him tethered to sanity.
He hadn’t seen sunlight in days...weeks... Maybe months... maybe more.
Time had begun to bleed... it was getting hard for him to keep his orientation right. And the monotony around him was actually driving him crazy.
The cave always smelled like iodine and iron. It was always damp... always dark... And the stench of dark magic... forbidden magic made every cell in his body itch and hum.
He kept scrapping the metal harder when suddenly he paused...
"Hmm..."
He thought he heard something.
So faint, it might have been the wind howling through the tunnels.
Dax froze trying to listen with concentration this time.
His fingers stopped. His breath hitched.
He turned slowly, like prey unsure if it was being hunted by its own imagination.
There, on the stone bed carved directly from the rock, Alpha Malrick lay unmoving.
The old Alpha was wrapped in old leather and bound by the ashes that kept him tethered to the world of the living.
Dax stared.
Nothing. No twitch. No flicker.
"Don’t be stupid," he muttered under his breath. "You are hearing ghosts now...don’t be too anxious."
He turned back to his blade.
"Hnn..."
There it was again.
Stronger.
Real.
The sword dropped from his hand and clanged to the floor. Dax was already moving.
He rushed across the chamber and then fell straight on his knees beside the old Alpha! "Alpha Malrick?" His voice almost trembled with joy. "Alpha...can you hear me?"
Still, the body looked dead. Stiff.Like a statue of a fallen god... carved out of marble. There was no colour.
Dax pressed his hand to Malrick’s cheek...it was as cold as ever, but not lifeless.They still had hope...if not today... then another day. Soon!
Dax grabbed a bowl of ash and scooped out a tiny bit.Then he mixed it with blood...old blood...the blood they had drawn from Autumn before sealing her powers...carefully preserved! And then he added ground silver...sacred to the Blackmoon line...in it. Without hesitation, Dax rubbed the mixture across Malrick’s chest, tracing the ancient sigils in particular.He had been doing this for days...at regular intervals.
"Come on, Alpha...wake up," he whispered. "Alpha Kieran is fighting out there all alone. You need to wake up! That necromancer has him wrapped around his finger...he’s given up what he holds most dear,because of you...to keep you alive...your son is suffering Alpha, please wake up."
And then, as if reacting to his words... or perhaps it was mere coincidence...Dax felt him tremble.
Just a flick.
Brows furrowed.
Fingers twitched.
Malrick groaned. His voice was a cracked whisper, dry as husk."...Dax?"
Dax laughed...in episodes...shaking and then loud and wild. He wiped at his eyes...he didn’t even know when tears of joy were shining.
"You are back," he said breathlessly. "By the Moon, you are really...You are back, Alpha!"
This was it.
This changed everything.
Alpha Kieran could finally be free now. No more chains. No more Roanoke.
And the Blackmoon line...The Blackmoon line might yet survive.
Though the old Alpha hadn’t fully woken...not yet...but the stirring meant the seal was getting a strong hold...he was ready to embrace life.
The darkness that had wrapped around Malrick since...was peeling away.
Dax sat beside him, whispering as though trying to call back a soul from the afterlife. But the Alpha had gone silent once more. But he knew, he would wake up soon.
He looked towards the seals glowing faintly across the ceiling.
It was all because of the blessed curse of the Blackmoons. Their wolves were blessed by the Moon... born with special traits, making them invincible... well almost. Until one of them let the darkness in... let the demons feast on their uniqueness.
He paused, lowering his gaze.
Fate had never fought fair.
The Alphas of the Blackmoon tribe carried the curse in their bloodline...many perished...some survived.It wasn’t like bad luck or madness.
It was real darkness.
Ancient. Hungry. Demonic.
It sang to their wolves in whispers. Turned love to rage. Pride to obsession. Even in death, their spirits roamed, wreaking havoc if not bound by ritual fire.
To stop it, Alpha Malrick had constructed something no one had dared before...a containment chamber in his own fortress.
Deep underground. Built not just to seal the demons... but to bind the souls of the Blackmoon themselves when they were most vulnerable.
In doing so, he had lost one of his sons...Karl...swallowed by the very thing they fought because of one slip... one silly childish mistake.
What nobody knew at that point was...Malrick had fallen, too.
The darkness had slithered into him when he had tried saving his Karl. It had hidden successfully in the seams of his strength, and when he realized it, he had sealed himself too...inside the very prison he built...but it was too late...
Not many people knew what happened to the other Blackmoon prince, Karl... but Dax knew. He had seen Kieran switch off his humanity and go feral after he was forced to take the life of his own brother...his twin at that... the other half of his soul.
Dax was merely a child at that time, but he always stuck around with his Alpha...he knew that Kieran had never been truly human again... until she came along... Autumn.
Then the darkness... turned their gaze on her.
So Kieran did the unthinkable.
He used what remained of his bloodline to shield her.
Because he didn’t have the strength to lose this sunshine!!
He gave up their blood. A legacy centuries old. The very power that held this prison...this hive together.
He sealed Autumn’s powers with it...so that the darkness would give up.
But he had to give her up too, because he wanted to save his father.
The day Autumn accidentally scrapped against those old portraits at the fortress... given them a taste of her blood... the darkness still lingering in them, triggered the demons... Kieran had tried locking her up.
He even appointed a Witch Knight to watch over her (remember the woman stationed outside Autumn’s confinement chamber in the attic?)
But that didn’t stop the demons... the revenants...from going straight after her.
And Kieran knew they would keep coming after her until her powers were either stripped away or sealed. Either of which was life threatening. And he was running out of time.
He didn’t even think twice before sacrificing the entire hive ... their essence trapped in the fortress...It wasn’t just giving up his legacy it was giving up harvested power from those trapped souls.
It was built like an emergency power reservoir for the Blackmoons.
But he gave up the very security of his pack... only for her... the only thing he wanted to save was his father... who was still recuperating from the inflictions of the darklings.
And that’s where Roanoke came in the picture.
That necromancer was the only one who could provide Kieran the sacred ash that could sustain Alpha Malrick’s fragile body outside the fortress... untill he could be eventually cured...using Autumn’s blood.
But Kieran didn’t know Roanoke would hold him hostage and demand he married Lyla in exchange for a regular supply of that ash!
Not to mention the Council’s looming threat because he had sheltered the fugitive Curzons! Necromancy was still a forbidden practice amongst the werewolves.
Surprisingly Velor had helped him seal a peace treaty without a war...supress evidence...take his guarantee in the Council...Little did he know, peace was only a metaphor.
"He gave up everything, Alpha... for your sake," Dax murmured. " He was only starting to find happiness... he was only relearning to live again...learning to care again...but he gave it all up so you could come back! Please, make it easy for your son, I beg you, Alpha Malrick! "
Dax put the bowl of ash away and slowly stood up! His voice was low now, barely above a whisper.
"He had to take Lyla as his wife publicly...all to buy time.All to keep you breathing. I can feel how it must have shattered,Autumn..." He scoffed looking down at the ground. " I know that feeling too well. I have walked in those shoes...And I know my Alpha will suffer too seeing his mate shatter like that! I know how much he loves her,even though he doesn’t say it out loud..."
Malrick’s lips moved again to Dax’s heart felt confession. His lips cracked through the ash on them. "...my son...my Kieran..."
Dax leaned forward. "He is waiting for you, Alpha.You need to wake up...so he can have his happiness back...his smile back...I had seen him smile after aeons,I swear...when Autumn came along."
Malrick’s eyes opened.
For the first time in what felt like forever,hope breathed beneath the Great Lake.
And above... the tides still turned.