The Rogue’s Scar
Keal moved through the shadows of the forest with the instinct of a hunter, his senses sharper than ever, every crack of branch underneath his foot, the night wind swept hard through the forest, rustling leaves like whispers from ghosts. But Keal wasn'turning from the dead. He was being chased by the living.
By hunters.
He could hear them now. The hunters were closing in speedily. He could hear them clearly now, their crushing steps across the forest floor, and the excellent beat of a pack that knows exactly how to track its prey.
They were common bounty seekers. These were pack-trained hunters, trained to track and kill without mercy.
His jaw clenched.
They would never stop, not while he still breathed, they would stop at nothing to keep the truth buried.
He increased his pace, he wouldn't make this easy for them. As he ran, he caught a flicker of memory, bitter and sharp. The night they branded him, the day they cast him out from among them.
A traitor. That's what they called him, a betrayal of blood, but they were wrong.
He had taken the fall for something he hadn't done, to protect someone who didn't deserve his silence. And now, the silence was costing him everything, his freedom, his future, his name, and mostly his pack.
Even his mark, once a symbol of pride and belonging, was now rebranded into a jagged reminder of all he had lost.
His bond to the Shadowmoon pack had been smeared by pain and smoke, leaving behind the scar on his chest and the secrets he guarded tenaciously like fire in his veins.
The trees spread past as he slipped through its branches clawing firmly at his torn sleeves, but Keal wasn't distracted by any of this.
He halted suddenly, his breath caught in his throat as the wind shifted.
Blood. Fresh. A sharp, metallic scent cut through the forest air.
Kael crouched low, heart pounding fiercely in his chest.
A pained whimper filtered through the dense tangle of undergrowth, faint but desperate.
He moved toward the sound, cautious but swift, muscles coiled to spring if the hunters closed in.
His eyes scanned the darkness until they found it. A wolf pup, no older than a few weeks. Caught in a cruel snare, its leg twisted awkwardly in the biting wire trap, trembling violently from fear and blood loss, it was alone and vulnerable.
He could leave it, he should.
But Kael’s instincts, the ones he had spent years burying beneath anger and distrust ignited. Not rage or revenge but compassion.
He moved toward it, voice low and gentle.
“Easy. I’ve got you.” he said.
The pup whimpered again but didn’t fight as Kael knelt and worked at the cruel metal.
The wire bit into his palms, drawing blood, but he didn’t flinch. His fingers worked with precision and urgency. He pulled until it snapped loose, freeing the trembling creature into his arms.
He knew he didn’t have time for this, he should expect while he still could but he couldn’t leave it behind. Clutching the pup to his chest, Kael spun as distant voices echoed through the trees closer now.
Calculating and confident.
They knew he was near, their voices cut through the night air like knives.
“Quiet now,” he whispered to the pup, tucking it tightly against him as he slipped deeper into the shadows of the trees.
His movements were fluid, silent. Every step mapped by instinct, every breath measured.
Yet his mind raced.
What did they really know? Did they know what the prophecy said? Did they know the part he played in it or who else was involved?
If they did, he wouldn’t be running for long, and neither would any other person involved.
PART II: The Healer’s Door.
The village of Hartmoor slept quietly beneath the weight of the forest’s shadow. Smoke drifted lazily from stone chimneys, lamplight glowed softly behind shuttered windows.
But inside a small, weathered cottage-turned-clinic, Lila couldn’t rest. Her fingers crushed dried wolfsbane into a fine powder, steady and practiced, but her mind was anything but calm.
Something was coming, She felt it deep in her bones as she paced nervously.
A small wolf pup lay curled on the narrow wooden table, its leg bandaged loosely but still bleeding. Its breaths were shallow, each one a fragile thread tethering it to life.
She had found it at her doorstep that morning alone, bleeding, as if dropped there by fate itself.
It wasn’t the first wounded creature she’d tended, but this felt different, heavier and more urgent.
Her mentor used to warn her about signs. That when the wind turned strange and wolves howled before the moon was full, change was near.
Tonight, the air was strange indeed.
The door creaked open.
Lila spun around, heart pounding so hard she feared it might burst from her chest.
A figure stood on the threshold, tall and broad-shouldered.
The moonlight caught in his silver eyes. His face was worn, scarred, his clothes streaked with dried blood and dirt.
But he held himself with the caution of someone who had learned not to trust the world and survived because of it.
She didn’t recognize him, at least not immediately, but something about him seemed… familiar.
Not his face, his energy.
“I need help,” he said, voice low and strained.
He staggered forward.
Lila moved before she could think.
She caught him under the arm as he sank to one knee, his strength bleeding out with every heartbeat.
“You’re hurt,” she whispered.
He gave a strained laugh. “Noticed.”
She guided him inside, her healer’s mind taking over, she didn’t ask who he was, she didn’t need to, not when the scar on his forearm caught the flickering candlelight.
Her breath hitched immediately.
The mark.
Shadowmoon.
The scared man..
The rogue.
“You shouldn’t be here,” she said softly, though her hands didn’t stop working. She peeled back torn fabric, cleaned dried blood, and found the deep gash along his ribs.
“Don’t worry,” he said, voice heavy with something unsaid. “I won’t stay long.”
Lila met his gaze. There was pain there, yes but not just physical.
This was a man carrying the weight of something deeper, something dangerous.She could feel it in the way the air shifted around him.
Still, her hands didn’t falter.
“I’m Lila,” she said finally.
He didn’t answer right away.
“Kael.” he muttered.
The name landed between them like a spark on dry brush.
She recognized it. The rogue who vanished,the one cast out. The one some believed dead.
She swallowed hard. “What happened?”
Kael looked past her, toward the pup on the table, and then toward the window.
“The truth,” he said, “is finally catching up.”
Outside, a wolf howled, closer than before.
Lila turned to the door. Someone or something was coming.
