The mountains of Lozère did not sleep, and neither did Vukan.
Under the pale, ghostly light of a crescent moon, the forest was a blur of silver and black.
Vukan was not running; he was tearing through the fabric of the night. He launched himself from the thick branch of a centuries-old pine, the heavy wood snapping violently from the sheer force of his takeoff.
He plummeted toward the jagged ravine below, only to twist mid-air, his boots slamming against a sheer cliff face.
Stone cracked and spider-webbed beneath his soles as he used the vertical wall as a springboard, ricocheting upward and across the gorge.
To a human eye, he wouldn't even be a shadow—he would be a sudden, violent gust of wind, a phantom distortion in the air.
He landed on the opposite ridge with a deafening thud, his momentum plowing a trench through the frozen dirt before he instantly broke into a sprint again. The trees whipped past him in an unrecognizable smear.
Yet, as the icy mountain air filled his lungs, a bitter realization gnawed at the edges of his mind.
"I am still a lot weak." He pushed his legs harder, but he could feel the ceiling of his current physical limits.
'I need more power. I need it if I am going to kill those bastards."
His thoughts drifted to the Chastels. They were outcasts, hiding in the fringes of the modern world just like the Leleus, but their power was entirely different.
They were human, but mutated by ancient rituals, wielding Elemental Psionics.
Their absolute mastery was over ice. And that was the very foundation of the blood feud.
The Chastels didn't just fight the Leleus; they eradicated them in the most agonizing way imaginable. A werewolf's greatest asset is its boiling, regenerative blood. The Chastels' ice psionics were specifically developed to counter that biology.
In the history of the war, Chastel hunters would use sub-zero psionic blasts to flash-freeze a Leleu's veins. The werewolf's rapid healing factor would fight the cold, creating a torturous, drawn-out agony where their blood literally crystalized while they were still alive, eventually causing their bodies to shatter like glass.
The Chastels viewed the Leleus as mindless abominations that needed to be cleansed from the earth, while the Leleus viewed the Chastels as unnatural aberrations.
It was a kill-or-be-killed absolute. So long as a single Chastel drew breath, the Leleu bloodline was marked for a frozen, shattering death.
Vukan's boots hit the peak of the highest summit, and he skidded to a violent halt.
Dust and loose shale cascaded over the edge of the precipice.
Breathing heavily, he raised his hands, staring at them in the moonlight.
As his heartbeat hammered in his ears, a sickening crunch echoed from his knuckles.
His skin stretched taut. From his fingertips, thick, blackened keratin erupted, elongating at an inhumane speed until wicked, curved talons, sharp enough to rend steel, extended from his hands.
"I have to work hard," Vukan whispered to the howling wind, clenching his monstrous claws into fists. "To settle this grudge."
As he looked down at the valleys below, Vukan reflected on his own nature. He was an anomaly.
His parents, Antoine and Jade, were purebred, yes, but over the centuries, the pure Leleu blood had become incredibly dormant.
It had thinned, settling deep into their marrow, making it harder for modern generations to tap into the primal supremacy of their ancestors.
But Vukan was a prodigy.
The blood had not thinned in him; it had bottlenecked, concentrating with terrifying potency.
According to Grandma Mila, the biology of their kind dictated a strict timeline. Werewolves lived vastly long lives. Because of this, it normally took a Leleu a full twenty years just to properly grasp and manifest their shadow composition. And the actual transformation?
To force the beast out, manipulate the bone and muscle, and do it without completely losing their mind to feral instincts took at least fifty years.
Getting your transformation within your first half-century of life was considered exceptional.
Vukan, however, had awakened early. He had naturally tapped into his heightened senses and began viciously training his body when he was only five years old.
Now, at fifteen, he could feel the beast prowling just beneath his skin, thrashing against the cage of his ribs. He was closer to a full transformation than any fifteen-year-old Leleu in recorded history.
And there was the matter of his eyes.
Every living descendant of the Leleu family, including his parents and his grandmother, inherited the crimson-red eyes—the trademark of their bloodline.
But when Vukan tapped into his bloodlust, his eyes did not burn red. They flared a brilliant, terrifying gold.
He had read the ancient texts hidden deep within the castle's library. Golden eyes were not a mutation. Golden eyes belonged only to the Progenitor—the original Beast of Gévaudan.
Vukan retracted his claws, the bones snapping back into place as his hands returned to normal.
He stared out into the vast, dark world where the Chastels were surely waiting, honing their ice.
"I need to be stronger..."he thought, the golden hue flickering in his irises. "But how?"