The Five Betas

The howl divided them.

Fenrisúlfr wanted to pursue it before the sound faded. Rafe wanted to wait until the Vale had shown its next lie. Lycurgus accused both of cowardice, while Ulbrecht insisted that the howl followed a measurable pattern and could be used as a compass.

“A compass points north,” Rannulf said. “That points at whichever wound it thinks will make us run.”

The narrow path led them through brambles that bled pale sap. Their feet left no prints. Rafe tore a strip from his cloak and tied it to a branch. A hundred paces later it hung before them again, clean and dry.

“We are walking in circles,” Ulbrecht said.

“No,” Rafe replied. “The Vale is walking around us.”

Sandalia stepped from the mist before any of them could answer. She looked much as Faelan might have remembered her, except for the grey at her temples and the scar drawn across one cheek. Her hands were empty. That made Lycurgus more wary than a weapon would have.

“Do not move,” Fenrisúlfr ordered.

Sandalia laughed once. “You have crossed the border of a place that has been waiting for you, and you still think command is a kind of safety.”

Rafe lowered his claws. “Where is Faelan?”

The question exhausted her. She sat on a root as if the Vale had finally allowed her to be tired.

She told them that she had not meant to lose him. A Bruxsa voice had found her years ago, whispering through the boundary stones. It knew the bitterness she hid from the court, knew how every elder saw only the gold child and never the girl who stood beside him. It promised a secret garden and a place where she would matter.

“I showed him the path,” she said. “I thought I would follow. But when he crossed, the trees closed behind him. The voice told me to go home and wait.”

“You left a child,” Ulbrecht said.

“I was a child.” Sandalia looked at him. “That is not an excuse. It is the first truth I have said about it.”

Rannulf found the tracks while they spoke. One set led towards a low arch of roots. Another crossed the mud without sinking into it.

“Someone is coming,” he said.

The black pool appeared beside them where no pool had been before. Its surface rose into a hand. Ulbrecht stared at the spiral carved into its palm, the same spiral he had copied from the stone.

“It is offering knowledge,” he said.

“It is offering bait,” Rafe replied.

Ulbrecht stepped closer. “You fear what you cannot name.”

“I fear what knows my name.”

The hand opened. Inside it lay a page from Ulbrecht’s book, written in his own hand. It described the moment he would become the first wolf to understand the Vale. He reached for it, certain he understood the invitation.

The water took him without a sound.

Lycurgus lunged, and Rannulf caught his shoulder. The pool closed. Ulbrecht’s book floated once, then sank.

For a moment none of them spoke. Fenrisúlfr’s charm had disappeared. Rafe knelt at the mud’s edge, but there was nothing to save.

“The Vale is not testing our strength,” Sandalia said. “It is choosing what to keep.”

The root arch opened onto a path lit by gold. Somewhere beyond it, a young man was singing a tune no one had heard for seventeen years.

Faelan’s voice had changed. His song had not.

Rannulf looked at the three surviving Betas, then at Sandalia. “No more crowns,” he said. “No more stories about who deserves what. We bring him out or we do not go out.”

Rafe nodded first. Even Lycurgus did.

Fenrisúlfr said nothing. But he followed.