The dream began in silence.

  King Vaross the Third stood alone in a vast forest, the trees rising like ancient pillars around him. Their branches tangled overhead, choking out the sky. A cold wind slid through the trunks, carrying the scent of wet earth and something older… something watching.

  Ahead of him, a river cut through the darkness. Black water. Slow. Unnatural.

  He stepped toward it.

  The surface rippled — not from wind, but from something moving beneath.

  Then he saw them.

  Two figures stood on the opposite bank. Blurry. Unfocused. But unmistakably shaped like him — the same height, the same shoulders, the same stance.

  Twins.

  His breath tightened.

  He tried to speak, but the forest swallowed his voice whole.

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  The figures didn’t move. They only watched him, their outlines flickering like dying embers.

  A low growl rolled across the mountains.

  Vaross turned.

  High above the treeline, on a jagged peak, a massive wolf?shaped silhouette stood against the storm clouds. Its eyes glowed faintly — not red, not gold, but something colder, something ancient.

  Aegis. But not as she was.

  As something larger. Older. A guardian… or a warning.

  Fear coiled around his ribs.

  The river darkened. The forest leaned closer. The twins stepped forward, their shapes sharpening.

  Then he heard it.

  A whisper sliding through the trees like a blade through cloth.

  “Vaross…”

  He froze.

  The whisper came again, closer now, curling around his spine.

  “Vaross…”

  The figures on the riverbank lifted their heads.

  The wolf on the mountain opened its jaws.

  The whisper twisted into a roar.

  “VAROSS!”

  Lightning tore across the dream — and across the real world.

  A deafening crack exploded through the palace.

  Above his bed, the great iron crest of the Vaross bloodline — the wolf’s head with the serpent coiled around its throat — shattered.

  The serpent’s iron body split clean through, fragments scattering across the stone floor. The wolf’s snarl fractured down the middle, its once?unyielding gaze broken.

  Vaross jolted awake, drenched in cold sweat, heart pounding like a war drum.

  The storm raged outside. Thunder rolled through the tower. Shards of the crest lay at his feet.

  The serpent’s coil had broken.

  And for the first time in his reign, King Vaross the Third felt truly, utterly afraid.