It woke the way rot does.
Not with fire.
Not with screams.
But with awareness.
Deep beneath stone older than names—older than wolves, older than the packs that strutted across the surface believing themselves apex—something listened.
The curse did not have a body in the way mortals understood bodies. It had anchors. Threads sunk into ley-veins, bones of the dead, the bloodlines that had been marked centuries ago and then forgotten. It existed in pauses between heartbeats. In the moment before a bond settled. In the fragile space where instinct overrode reason.
For a long time, it had slept.
Starved. Bound. Waiting.
Now—
Now something had snapped.
A false bond flared like a struck match.
The curse shuddered.
Ah.
So the Bloodstone line still lived.
It stretched—not physically,
