The stench of rotting meat was a siren song in the wild. It drifted out of the damp, hidden cave—a grotto shielded from the prying eyes of the world by a veil of plummeting river water. Inside, the air was heavy with the copper tang of blood and the damp musk of a predator.
Outside, the forest floor began to vibrate. A massive pack of Void-Stalking Wolves, their fur matted with the grime of the lowlands, emerged from the brush. Their eyes were glowing pinpricks of neon light in the twilight. They were hungry, driven into a frenzy by the scent of fresh kills emanating from behind the curtain of water.
One wolf, a mangy, starving creature with ribs visible beneath its pelt, lunged forward. It leaped through the veil of falling water, expecting to land on a helpless, bleeding carcass.
ZAP.
The moment the beast's snout touched the invisible threshold of the cave, a thunderbolt barrier erupted. It wasn't a spark; it was a concentrated strike of divine lightning. The wolf didn't even have time to whimper. Its body detonated in mid-air, a shower of black fur, charred flesh, and bone fragments raining down onto the wet rocks.
The pack behind it, blinded by animalistic hunger, didn't register the death. Ten more wolves surged forward, diving through the water stream. One by one, they hit the barrier. The sound was like a rhythmic drumbeat of slaughter—pop, pop, pop—as the air turned into a meat grinder. The river turned dark with the pulverized filth of the pack.
Then came the Alpha. It was a massive, twelve-foot nightmare of rippling black fur and eyes like cold, sapphire ice. It approached the water's edge, its growl vibrating in the dirt. It stopped dead. The blood in the water—the blood of the wolves that had already died—wasn't red. It had turned a sickening, neon shade of lime green.
The Alpha froze, its primitive brain finally processing the danger. It turned to flee, but it was too late. A massive, elongated claw, tipped with razor-sharp obsidian, exploded from the darkness of the cave. It pierced through the back of the Alpha's skull, exiting through its lower jaw. With a wet, tearing sound, the Alpha's head was completely severed from its body.
From the darkness of the cave emerged Beatrice.
Her hair, once a cascade of spun gold, was a matted, blood-soaked curtain hanging over her face. She stepped over the headless corpse of the Alpha, her feet bare and stained in gore. The remaining wolves, sensing the primal, bottomless violence radiating from her, whimpered and began to retreat—until something dropped from the sky.
THOOM.
A beast, larger than a dragon and faster than a whisper, slammed into the earth. It was a Legendary Beatrice Griffin—the male progenitor of the line. It didn't roar; it simply opened its massive, serrated beak and began a systematic harvest. It moved like a blur, its claws tearing through the pack. Two hundred wolves were ripped apart in seconds, their yelps silenced before they could even hit the ground.
Beatrice stood amidst the carnage, her face covered in the hot blood of the Alpha. She looked less like a human and more like a manifestation of the world's cruelty. She let out a dry, haunting laugh that sounded like dry leaves scraping over a tombstone.
"Buddy," she whistled, her voice raspy from disuse.
The massive Griffin stopped its slaughter, folded its wings, and knelt before her. Beatrice reached out, her hands shaking, and petted the beast's head. The creature let out a low, mourning trill. It leaned against her, and for a moment, the blood-soaked woman and the legendary predator looked like two souls sharing a grave.
They walked to the edge of the riverbank, to a patch of green grass that was torn up by mounds of fresh mud. They stood before a grave—a shallow, hastily dug lump of earth.
"It's okay, buddy," she whispered to the Griffin. "You don't have to worry. I'm here. I'm still here."
She stared at the mud, and her mind fractured. She saw the past. She saw the days when she had two Griffins—a male and a female. She remembered the moments the female had given birth to the white griffin that Rayn now kept locked in his core, and the blue ones that were born before she died.
What hurt the most—what made the bile rise in her throat—was the memory of the female giving birth to the blue one. The mother had been so weak, her life force draining away into the earth, yet she had still crawled to Beatrice's side to fight alongside her one last time before dying in the dirt. They had buried her right there.
Beatrice remembered the beautiful, fleeting moments of her life, followed by the betrayal. She remembered the faces of the people who had wiped out her lineage. The memory of her own blood—the daughter she had raised—turning against everything she stood for.
"Don't worry," Beatrice hissed, her voice turning into a serrated blade. "I'm going to take revenge for your loss. Even if I have to slit my own daughter's throat and watch her bleed out on this dirt, I'm going to do it. She's not my flesh anymore. She's a disease."
As the hatred surged, her green eyes underwent a terrifying transformation. They elongated, the pupils stretching into vertical, reptilian slits. A faint, golden dragon-aura flickered around her skin. The Griffin let out a sharp cry, sensing the shift in her humanity, nudging her until the slit-eyes faded back to human, though the madness remained.
"What's happening to me?" she muttered, clutching her head.
Suddenly, a figure appeared in the clearing. The stranger was draped in heavy black cloth, their face hidden behind a cold, expressionless mask. Beatrice saw the intruder and her posture shifted from grieving mother to coiled predator.
"What is the reason for your arrival?" Beatrice demanded, her voice cold and lethal.
The masked figure didn't flinch. They reached into their robes, pulled out a scroll, and handed it over to her with a bow.
"Madam," the figure whispered. "Your son, our King, tells me to give this to you. He was expecting you to come with me. You are going to get protected from the Aetheleon kingdom."
Beatrice stared at the note, her lips curling into a scornful sneer. She laughed—a bitter, jagged sound that echoed through the trees.
"Just because I lost to my daughter doesn't mean I'm going to run to my son like a pathetic child," she spat, tossing the note into the mud. "Tell him I don't want any protection from him. I am going to avenge my revenge by myself, and I don't need a king's charity to do it."
She took a step toward the messenger, her eyes narrowing with lethal intensity. "Hey. I want you to tell me something. How are my other three sons? Is my eldest son, King, taking good care of them in his kingdom?"
The person in the mask bowed their head slightly. "They are good, Madam. Your eldest son, King, is reigning over his realm with an iron fist, and your other three sons serve as his ministers, ensuring the kingdom's borders are secure. But they wish to come here, to this kingdom, to kill the whole of Aetheleon, so they can protect you from those fucking bastards."
After hearing those words, Beatrice didn't feel comfort; she felt an explosion of rage. She whipped out a knife—the jagged, stained tool of a hunter—and jammed it into the trunk of the tree right next to the messenger's head.
"Just because you are from my son's kingdom doesn't mean you have the right to spew that kind of shit in front of me!" Beatrice roared, her blonde hair flying back as the dragon energy began to leak out of her aura again. "If you say one more word about my homeland being a shitty place, ' I'm going to gut you right here. I may not be strong enough to kill my sons, but I am strong enough to make them not going to walk again. Do I make myself clear?"
"One last thing, Madam," the masked figure added, their voice shaking. "There is a rumor. Your brother, King Nullus, met with King Rexus of Aetheleon. They talked about killing you to make a good impression on the people. After your daughter Rena caused that chaos, no one is listening to the King. Everyone wants to see you and your daughter dead."
Beatrice laughed, a hollow, chilling sound. "My brother... and I think Rexus knows that we both are biological siblings. So, this is how I am going to turn against this whole mess."
The messenger trembled, nodded frantically, and fled into the shadows, disappearing toward Beatrice son kingdom.
Beatrice stood alone under the vast, uncaring sky, her chest heaving. She looked up at the heavens, her expression one of agonizing conflict.
"See, God?" she whispered to the empty air. "My sons are trying to protect me. My daughter has abandoned me just because I was her mother. Both my daughter and my sons turn against my home land , Aetheleon. Do I have to kill her because she burned the entire Human Kingdom to the ground? Or am I meant to forgive her because she was subjected to the same fucking treatment for twenty years, and that torment is what turned her into a beast?"
She looked at her blood-stained hands, trembling.
"What should I do? Is it 'right' to kill my daughter because she razed those cities, or does she have the right to kill everyone because of how we treated her for all those years? What is right? What is wrong? Who decides the morality of a monster?"
She stood there, a woman torn between the ghost of her motherly love and the inferno of her desire for vengeance, while the Griffin waited patiently by her side, its massive wings draped over her like a shroud of protection. The silhouettes of her four sons—King and his three ministers—loomed in the back of her mind like shadows, but in her heart, there was only the fire of a mother who had been burned by the world.
After questioning, she understood her children also take of her own cruel and brutal nature killing people like a monster and without changing a emotion.