As the caravan moved steadily along, the captors constantly sized up their haul, peering at the caged beasts like greedy traders evaluating a fine shipment of silk. Each demonic beast was systematically identified by its breed and slapped with a price tag based on some cruel, cryptic metric entirely beyond the beasts' comprehension. Even the white wolf, whose sharp intellect had always been the proudest asset of the pack, was left utterly helpless at the actions of these naked creatures.
During the long, arduous journey, the group frequently encountered other creatures of the same kind. To the white wolf's utter surprise, its captors repeatedly attacked their own kind, binding them and throwing them into iron cages just like the demonic beasts they had captured in the forest. As a wolf, this direct betrayal of one's own kind was a fundamental impossibility—a dark lesson the white wolf was only now learning. Through the blood and chaos of these fratricidal clashes, the young wolf managed to decipher fragments of the strange language used by the naked ones, learning that their race was called 'humans,' though they seemed to lack the very 'humanity' that supposedly defined them.
When the number of captured humans reached a certain threshold, the captors seemed to become significantly happier, leading to wild, raucous celebrations each night. During these celebrations, the humans the white wolf had identified as female among the captives were pulled roughly from their cages and subjected to horrific abuse all night long by their captors. The white wolf watched all of this with a grim nonchalance, until one night when the celebration spiralled entirely out of control. The captive human women had reached their absolute physical limits, and further abuse would have proven fatal. Driven by depravity, the captors began forcing themselves upon the demonic beasts.
This was the night that would permanently define the thoughts and soul of the white wolf for millennia to come. The human captors dragged the white wolf's mother and sister out of their adjacent cages, violating them mercilessly through the long hours of the night while the white wolf looked on with absolute rage and horror. By morning, the white wolf had lost all life in his eyes, and his sister and mother were in an even worse state. Their eyes were no different from those of the dead as they lay broken in their cages.
The human captors did not speak of the incident afterward, acting as though they had unanimously agreed to forget everything that had transpired on that moonlit night. Forgetting was easy for the humans, but it was an impossibility for the captured beasts and the remaining human prisoners. For the white wolf, this existence became an absolute hell. Since his birth, the white wolf had possessed a flawless memory, to the point that he had never forgotten a single detail in his entire life. He had always previously thought of this as a supreme gift from the gods, but now he realized that it was his greatest curse, curse thrust upon him by the cruelest of devils. At this point in his young life, he did not yet know how right he truly was. Whenever he closed his eyes or tried to sleep, his mind would instantly relive that night in the greatest, most agonizing detail possible.
Following that night, the human captors made the calculated decision to execute all the remaining human captives in a desperate attempt to permanently erase the evidence of their actions. The beasts were spared only because they were considered mindless creatures who lacked the capability to communicate or expose the truth to human society. Although the captors incurred heavy financial losses by slaughtering their human cargo, they preferred to take the loss rather than risk losing their standing and reputation within the civilized human domains.
E