Garden of lilies

Bara D’Aragon stood in the middle of ruin and moonlight, the kind that made broken stone look like bone. His coat—once black, once proud—hung in torn ribbons from his shoulders. Blood darkened the fabric, warm in some places, cooling in others.

He had fought his way out of the Eastern front. Neo-Human mages. Cursed blood tricks. Fire that didn’t burn right. He’d won, but victory had a cost, and his body was making him count every coin.

Now the Northern Wolf Army had him boxed in.

They formed a crescent of steel and shadows across a garden that shouldn’t have survived the war. White lilies still grew between shattered columns and old stone ruins, their petals trembling in the night breeze as if they could feel the soldiers’ hunger.

Bara forced his spine straight. His muscles screamed. He didn’t give them the satisfaction of seeing him fold.

A hiss cut through the air.

From the trees, a red streak launched toward him—not a bullet, not an arrow. A Blood-Bolt.

Bara turned his head a heartbeat before impact. The bolt skimmed past his ear close enough to prickle his skin, then smashed into the ruins behind him. Red mist erupted, and the explosion slapped the garden with a wet, hateful sound.

So they were done watching.

A voice followed, lazy and sharp at the same time.

“Still moving, pup?”

Grass parted like a mouth opening.

Commander Varick stepped into the moonlight, and the wolves behind him seemed to breathe easier, as if the real weapon had arrived. Varick was the Hand of Alpha Tyrone—Neo-Human with too much Lycan in his blood to ever be mistaken for ordinary. He didn’t carry a rifle. He didn’t need distance.

In both hands he held a greatsword, enormous and brutal, its blade edged with teeth like a saw. Runes were carved into the metal—old marks that glowed a yellow-orange, the color of a predator’s eyes just before it pounced.

Varick’s left eye burned with that same feral gold.

He looked Bara up and down and smiled like he’d found something rotten to step on.

“Look at you.” His sneer flicked toward the field of lilies. “The Great Heir of Lucien D’Aragon.” He let the title drip. “And you’re dying in a garden. How poetic. A nice place to rest.”

Bara didn’t answer.

He gathered what little strength he had left the way a dying man gathers breath—carefully, stubbornly, and with no promise it would be enough.

He’d been called a failure long before tonight. A D’Aragon who couldn’t use his Lycan blood. A weak heir. An embarrassment. After his family was destroyed, he’d trained until his hands split and his lungs burned, forging a core that was flawed and unstable but still his.

When he pushed power into it, his eyes flashed silver—pure-blood Lycan, from a lineage most had forgotten.

The change always hurt.

His skin didn’t simply harden. It cracked like drought-struck earth, then sealed again, tougher than before. His bones didn’t simply strengthen. They shifted and reshaped with the sharp snap of wood breaking.

Pain lanced through him—and with it came speed.

Bara lunged.

Silver light tore across the lilies. His claws—charged with the thin, dangerous edge of his energy—struck Varick’s greatsword with a collision that boomed through the garden. Petals burst into the air in a white storm.

Steel and claw locked.

Varick grunted, surprised, then laughed under his breath. “So the runt has teeth.”

He wrenched the blade sideways, swinging from one side to the other in a brutal arc meant to take Bara’s head off. Bara dropped low, the sword shrieking over him, carving the air.

Bara’s hand went to the weapon at his hip—a short blade with a silvered edge, more practical than pretty. He drove it forward as he rose.

The strike sank into Varick’s leg.

Leather split. Golden blood spilled, hot and bright against the pale lilies.

Varick roared. The sound shook the soldiers behind him and made the flowers tremble. He didn’t retreat. He dropped his greatsword as if it were nothing, seized Bara by the collar of his coat, and slammed his forehead into Bara’s skull.

White flashed behind Bara’s eyes.

His silver glow flickered. His body tried to bring up the hardened shield of his shifting skin, but exhaustion dragged his power down like chains.

Varick’s fist hammered into Bara’s stomach.

Ribs creaked. Breath punched out of him.

Bara coughed, and blood sprayed across the lilies at his feet, staining white petals red.

“Enough,” Varick said, as if bored.

He raised one hand.

Claws slid from his fingers—long, glossy, black as glass. Not steel. Not bone. Something older and crueler.

Varick stepped in close, close enough for Bara to smell the iron on his breath. “You don’t need a weapon to end a mistake.”

The claws drove into Bara’s chest with a wet, terrible sound.

Bara jerked, gasping, his back arching as Varick’s hand closed around his heart and squeezed.

Pain became a single bright line that cut through everything.

Varick leaned closer, gold eye burning with mockery. “Your family never loved you, Bara. You were never really a wolf.” His voice softened, and that made it worse. “You were an adopted mistake.”

Then Varick ripped his hand free.

Bara fell backward into the lilies. Petals stuck to the wound in his chest, fluttering with each shallow breath as blood poured out. The world tilted. The moon blurred. The night sky above him was cruelly clear, stars steady and indifferent while kingdoms collapsed beneath them.

The silver in his eyes dimmed.

Everything turned gray at the edges.

He felt dew against his neck, cold and gentle—almost kind. He heard heavy boots marching past his body as the Northern Army moved on, leaving him behind.

Toward the D’Aragon Palace.

Toward what was already ruins.

As the last warmth slipped away, something tugged at Bara’s soul—an invisible hook catching in the dark. Flashes of his past broke across his vision like lightning behind closed eyelids, and rain began to fall, soft at first, then steady, tapping against his face as if the world itself was trying to wake him up.

And

somewhere beyond the gray, something waited to answer.

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