"You insolent immortal! Insolent immortals! How dare you trespass the heavens!"
King Relik keeled over again.
The voice came from everywhere in the endless hall. It sank into a low echo, then crashed inside his skull like thunder, rattling what little coherence he had left.
His insides twisted horribly. His belly churned but nothing came up as the silver rope tightened yet again around his rib cage.
The silver bindings, one of his kind's weaknesses, were a scorching chokehold that began at the base of his neck, biting deep as it snaked a path of fire down his bare body. It locked his hands to his sides and sealed his legs together with no space left in between.
This lone figure suspended in the middle of a long rectangular hall was like a caterpillar caught in an infernal cocoon.
The door through which he had met his downfall was just before him on the right and ajar. Dried blood trailed from the opposite sides of the grey doorframe like a spider web. It traveled high on the walls and stopped short of lamp-holders which glowed with a flickering orange candlelight.
Every ten steps, another lamp-holder flickered, repeating the same dim glow until it blurred into the distance.
In contrast, the parallel wall bore large oval windows with no curtains. All shut while following the same pattern as the lamp-holders.
In this dim hall, King Relik was the only living being. An unseen force kept his body upright.
All his soul energy had long been squeezed out of him.
Through a sweaty and blood-hazed vision, he saw one of his canines lying like a fallen soldier. He had lost the other one earlier. It must have been when he was sucker-punched right in the teeth.
Like it was waiting for him to notice, a phantom pain sprang from the spot where they used to be. His lips drew back in a twitching snarl, exposing two holes.
Once dangerously yellow eyes had dulled to a wood-brown. Unseeing and glassy.
Jet-black hair in a tangled disarray. The red studded earrings that had been forced on him earlier that morning were the only article of clothing left on him.
A hollow opened in his belly. Wide shoulders had long bowed its defeat. There was no use strategizing.
There was no escape.
He had never known what it meant to be so powerless. If he had known, he wouldn't have acted so recklessly.
Under this searing pain, his wolf forcibly shifted into a human. King Relik couldn't bring himself to look down at what his body was like under the bindings.
Nonetheless, that wasn't his utmost concern.
Last he saw his companions was strewn in grotesque positions, unmoving just outside the hall that held him prisoner.
The thought that brought the most wretchedness was the vampire, whose wounds had stopped healing the moment they had stepped into this godforsaken palace.
From the amount of blood he'd seen before getting trapped, his companions were on their last breaths.
However, King Relik had refused to accept defeat at first.
How could he? He had come too far to give up. After being so riled up, how could he let this god go without a proper beating?
Woefully, not even one strike of his had hit its mark, and there he was... At the brink of death.
He sucked in a noisy breath and swallowed a dry throat with a contorted face. The air was heavy with the scent of burnt offerings. The sweat on that visible pallid skin had long dried out. He was stiff and dizzy, yet he couldn't pass out.
His companions needed his help.
How did it come to this? They had only come to seek answers. How did it become like this?
It was this temper in him. It was all him.
His face creased in extreme agony.
"I sense your heart, immortal. Have you learned your place?" The voice was too calm to be mockery. All-knowing and all-seeing. Here and yet far away.
The tears that he'd been holding back spontaneously gushed out, blazing hot trails that mixed with blood and dirt, tickling his skin.
Shame on this cry-baby king. Shame to the werewolves.
"Please," he said with as much strength as he could muster. His chest heaved, face squeezing with each painful breath.
"I apologize! I have erred. Spare them," he coughed and begged until he croaked, "I beg- g you. They shouldn't die because of me."
"Sores should be excised before they fester. Pathetic!" For an unknown reason, the unseen voice rose with even greater wrath. The echo bounced across the walls.
"Sores?" He thought numbly.
Relik momentarily chilled as he finally zeroed in on one thing. The ground was shaking beneath him.
What's going on-
A sudden, bright flash of light appeared from the left side and almost blinded him as he turned to look in a knee-jerk response. Lightning flashes were striking left and right illuminating the vast darkness outside. Until one had enough and speared a window pane. Shards of glass rained down.
Relik didn't recognise the terror-struck reflection that stared back at him as one big glass raced towards him like a javelin.
For a second he was unable to move. And like a switch was turned on, his head whipped to the side and the javelin missed his cheek by hair's breadth.
It was a sorrowful sound it made as it shattered on the floor.
An electrifying thunderclap sounded, and a torrential downpour released.
"It can't be," a strange sound ripped out of his chest. The walls of this chest seemed to rapidly collapse, closing in, suffocating his organs.
The king's body was seized in a full-body convulsion as he dragged his aching neck to look back at the window.
And, he saw.
Blood spattered the window, and ran down a jagged course. A road of no return.
Nerves stood still. Those wild eyes betrayed his inner feelings, and a thousand thoughts flashed through his mind before it all ended abruptly.
No. No. No! No!
"No," he sobbed as he mentally tried to put a stop at the events which would eventually follow. The sordid events that had hastened his journey to this hell.
Alas. The torrential downpour was blood.
Another thunderclap followed. A fool's nightmare.
The last one was downright cruel.
It shook the very foundation of heaven and this sorry body of his that was being held steady by the searing furnace.
Relik looked on in a stupid daze.
The knight in shining armour had turned into a leaf in the wind.
His head hurt. His body hurt. The hollow in his belly deepened.
His eyes opened and closed slowly.
The image persisted. Trembling, he pulled away. This cruel god had the ability to create this hallucination borne out of his darkest fears.
"You are next." Yet again, calm. It sealed the truth that he didn't want to accept.
The lights in the room snuffed out like the wave of a hand.
The king's mouth opened and closed to taste copper. The wind reeked of wet metal.
The rain was an insistent drumming against the rooftop, pounding on the window panes. Insistent against his head, against his heart.
The unimaginable agony from the silver bindings was now a joke in comparison.
In the dark, it was spelled out to him in capital letters. The vampire... No. No. His lover had just passed away.
And he had just stood here.
The horror film that had just rolled out its finishing credits was the trademark of death of every royal heir and king in the middle realm.
The dim halls slowly gleamed in a red hue.
The quiet glow of the blood moon of the Vitekan empire was the nail in the coffin.
Con-
He couldn't bear to think it. He tried to reach out to him through their mind channel knowing fully well it had been blocked from the moment they ascended to the upper realm.
His head slumped in a hitched gasp.
You just promised me a long life. Why are you leaving before me?
Why?
And all for...
And all for what?
If yet another person told King Relik that he was the strongest werewolf ever to be born, who knew what he would do to that person?
Then, he thought of his lover and guilt suffocated him.
The groans of the wounded animal was heart-rending. He couldn't utter a proper word.
Unusually, that overbearing voice had not spoken again. He was next. What was it waiting for?
Oh, right.
The ocean of blood below his feet was his. His chest was crisscrossed in multiple red slashes that had been shutting his body down quietly.
Unfair!
He began to struggle. The heat seared his bones.
Not like this. He was fangless, clawless. utterly powerless and he was really going to die, but not like this. This couldn't happen.
Whether he could help it or not, his movements grew weaker.
Before Relik closed his eyes eternally with the heavy weight of infinite regrets, he was reminded of the warning that that lovingly intoxicating voice had whispered in his ears. If this wasn't truly merciless...
"Stubborn mule, you look before you leap."
He hadn't looked, and because of that he had led three others to an untimely end.
A lone tear dropped from the corner of his eye. It had no place to go.
"Forgive me..."
At that moment, another raging thunderstorm swept out the wet sky in the entirety of the middle realm. A grey moon appeared at its centre. This was the silver moon without its light.
The werewolves shook with dread. There was pin-drop silence as all forms of life froze for a second not yet recovering from the metallic rain of death that had suddenly stopped.
Through the veil, a hoarse wail from the Moonstone halls pierced the metallic silence. The rains continued but it was clear this time.
In that year, King Relik passed.
---
Hundred years ago.
Back then, King Relik was a bumbling young prince.
The werewolves were still waiting for the birth of someone.