The sky over the White Shoals was an iron canopy, bruised with thunderclouds, as if the heavens themselves mourned what was to come. Wind whipped across the shallows, carrying the sharp scent of brine and the distant rumble of crashing waves.
Aldric stood on the bluff overlooking the surf, his cloak snapping around him like a banner of war. Below, the fleet assembled: longships bearing the crescent wolf, trident-prowed raiders from the Drowned Vale, and the warships of Frostfang, patched and bristling with siege weapons.
They waited, drawn in a ragged semicircle around the rocky shoals, facing the growing darkness beyond the sea. There, like a gathering swarm, the Reaver fleet coiled across the horizon, their bone-painted sails a ghastly choir of death.
Aldric felt the silence of his men behind him — that electric stillness before a scream. Rowena was there, brushing snow from her sleeve, her eyes steady but filled with something raw and bright. Kaelin, battle-armored, studied the waves as if they might speak secrets.
And Torven, Son of the Drowned Vale, turned to Aldric with a grin full of sea-salt teeth.
"WOLF-KING," he rumbled, voice like a storm breaking over cliffs, "you mean to fight them here?"
Aldric nodded, jaw set. "If they break us here, they will drown all the North."
Torven bellowed a laugh. "Then let them break their bones upon our spears!"
A Gathering of Wolves
Throughout the day, soldiers made their final vows. Men from Frostfang bound scraps of wolf-pelt to their wrists, while Torven's sailors daubed salt upon their brows, an ancient ward against the sea-spirits. Rowena moved among them like a blessing given flesh, whispering quiet prayers, tying charms of iron to trembling hands.
Kaelin inspected her knights with pitiless precision, adjusting sword-straps, lifting visors, tapping steel with a clang that echoed through the gathered ranks.
"Your King will stand in the van," she announced, voice slicing through the wind. "Fail him, and you fail every child of the North."
A ripple of pride answered her words.
Aldric watched it all with the strangest calm, as though he stood outside himself. He saw the faces of boys too young for war, of grizzled veterans who had seen too much, of women carrying bows who had lost sons to the Reavers — all woven together by a thread of desperate courage.
He closed his eyes for a moment, listening for the heartbeat of his homeland, and felt it thrum through his bones: fierce, stubborn, unwilling to bend.
The Reaver's Advance
At dusk, the sea boiled with black sails.
The Reaver ships moved in unison, each oar stroke perfectly timed, their figureheads monstrous: skulls of whales, twisted talons of carrion birds, human bones lashed to the prows.
A low chant rose from their decks, harsh and guttural, beating like war-drums across the water.
Rowena stepped up beside Aldric, a thin line of fear around her mouth. "They're chanting your name," she whispered. "As a curse."
Aldric's grip tightened on his sword. "Let them. Let them remember it."
Thunder rolled overhead, a grim applause from the sky.
The First Collision
The tide surged, carrying the enemy closer, and with a cry that shattered the last of the dusk, the Reavers attacked.
Ballistae loosed burning quarrels, hissing through the dark like meteors. Aldric's men answered with a volley of fire-arrows, streaking against the sky in a blaze of red.
Wood splintered. A Frostfang ship rocked as a grapnel caught its rail, jerking it close. Reavers swarmed over the sides, screaming in their brutal tongue.
Aldric leapt forward, sword flashing in a whirl of silver. The blade bit into flesh, severing an arm, then twisted free.
Rowena fired arrow after arrow, her eyes narrowed to a killer's focus, each shaft finding a throat, an eye, a heart.
Kaelin's knights met the enemy with shields locked, forming a wall of iron that turned aside the Reavers' first rush. Behind them, Torven's raiders struck like sea-serpents, their tridents darting forward in a dance of death.
The two forces tangled in a nightmarish knot of blood and steel, crashing together again and again with the roar of wolves and the shriek of gulls overhead.
Among the Shoals
Amid the chaos, Aldric found himself face to face with a Reaver captain.
The man was huge, scarred from throat to knee, with a ring of shark's teeth around his brow. His axe was jagged and foul, caked with old gore.
"WOLF!" he howled, lips twisting into a grin. "YOUR BONES WILL SING ON MY MAST!"
Aldric answered with a cold, beautiful fury.
Steel rang against steel, the force of their blows vibrating through the deck. The captain swung wild, but Aldric ducked under, driving his sword into the brute's thigh.
The Reaver bellowed, swinging down with terrifying power — Aldric barely turned the blow, feeling the axe glance off his shoulder. Sparks flew. Pain shot through his arm.
Before the captain could recover, Aldric surged up, driving his sword through the man's chest.
The Reaver stumbled back, hands scrabbling at the steel, then fell to the deck with a wet thud.
Rowena's Stand
Further down the gangway, Rowena found herself cornered as two Reavers closed on her. She had no time to string another arrow.
Instead she drew her short sword, eyes flashing, and stepped forward in a blur of grace that felt almost inhuman.
The first man lunged — she spun aside, letting him overextend, then drove her blade between his ribs with a dancer's precision.
The second crashed at her, a cudgel raised, but she pivoted low, slicing his hamstring, sending him sprawling.
Rowena raised her blade, ice-cold, and ended him with a single, merciful stroke.
The Breaking Tide
Wave after wave came, and still Aldric's line held.
Kaelin fought like a war-goddess, her hammer striking with such force that men simply crumpled before her. Torven's voice rose above the din, calling sea-prayers, rallying his sailors whenever the line wavered.
The storm broke overhead at last, drenching the deck in icy rain, but no one cared — their blood was already fire.
Aldric felt the thunder crackle through him, felt the hiss of rain on steel, and screamed his rage at the night.
The Reavers broke.
One ship pulled away, then another, as the wolves surged forward with unstoppable fury, driving their foes back across the shoals.
Aldric raised his sword, dripping with salt and blood, and roared.
"DRIVE THEM TO THE DEPTHS!"
The men answered with a howl that shook the sea.
Aftermath
The dawn was a pale, shaken thing, sliding across a world changed by slaughter.
Bodies floated among broken timbers. The tide carried the dead back to shore in slow, silent tribute.
Rowena moved among the wounded, her hands steady but her eyes raw. She found a child — no older than ten — huddled beneath a shield, sobbing, blood on his face.
She knelt, gathered him close, whispering quiet words until his sobs eased.
Aldric saw her there, and something twisted painfully in his chest. If I fail, he thought, all this will be for nothing.
He turned to Kaelin, who stood grim and resolute.
"Count our losses," he ordered.
She nodded. "I will."
Torven came to stand beside him, wiping rain from his beard.
"They will return," the raider warned. "They will gather more."
Aldric looked to the horizon, where the sea still churned, and let the promise burn through him like a brand.
"Then we will break them again," he said, voice low and certain. "Until they remember that the North does not bow."
Night Visions
That night, Aldric slept poorly.
He dreamed of a hall filled with wolves, their eyes burning, their teeth red with blood. They circled him, howling, calling him traitor.
And in the shadows behind them stood a woman, cloaked in seaweed and bone, her voice a poison whisper:
You will forget yourself. You will forget them. You will belong to me.
He woke, drenched in sweat, the echoes of that voice still crawling through his skull.
Rowena stirred beside him, reaching for his hand.
"Bad dreams?"
He nodded. "I keep seeing something… something that wants to make me forget."
Rowena's eyes darkened. "Then hold on to me," she said fiercely. "And I will remind you."
Preparations
Over the following days, Frostfang sent riders to every village, every holdfast, every hidden valley. Spears were sharpened, arrows fletched, walls repaired.
Aldric worked among them like any other man, mending shield-straps, instructing boys barely old enough to hold a blade, eating at the same fires as the common folk.
Rowena watched him with a quiet pride that sometimes left her breathless. Here was no distant king of marble and gold — here was a wolf who fought alongside his pack.
Kaelin and Torven trained together, forging a new kind of unity between land and sea, iron and water.
At night, Aldric stood on the battlements, staring out into the darkness, waiting for the next challenge.
It would come. He could feel it in his bones, in the shifting currents of wind and fear.
Foreshadowing the Serpent
One evening, as snow began to fall like drifting ghosts, an old woman approached the gate, leaning on a carved staff. Her cloak was rags, but her eyes gleamed like polished jet.
"I have a message for the Wolf-King," she croaked.
Kaelin stepped forward, wary. "Speak."
The woman lifted her chin.
"Tell him the sea will steal his name, his heart, and his family," she rasped. "Tell him the serpent waits."
Then she turned and vanished into the snow, leaving only the echo of her words behind.
Rowena, standing nearby, went cold all over.
Aldric's Resolve
They found Aldric moments later, deep in strategy with his captains.
Rowena repeated the old woman's warning, voice shaking despite herself.
For a moment, silence.
Then Aldric looked up, calm as a blade drawn in the dark.
"Let the sea come for me," he said, each syllable cutting through the chill air. "I will not forget. And if I do… you will remind me."
Rowena reached for him, gripping his hand, a vow sparking between them, fierce and unbreakable.
The Calm Before the Next Storm
Snow fell through the night, soft and endless, turning the courtyard of Frostfang into a place of quiet white.
Soldiers huddled close to the braziers, murmuring prayers. Children peeked from doorways, clutching wooden swords, dreaming of heroes.
And in the highest tower, Aldric and Rowena stood side by side, gazing at the endless dark beyond the walls, where monsters waited.
Neither spoke. Words were too small for what lay ahead.
Instead they stood together, hand in hand, as the wind howled through the ramparts, promising that war was not yet done — that wolves would still have to fight, and bleed, and howl before peace could return to their land.