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---
On the Deathward side of the continent of Varmenia—where maps are folded away in sheer ignorance and fear—lies the Nightwood, a realm severed from time and subject to none of the natural laws we know.
It was no ordinary forest: as if the cosmos had expelled a fragment of itself onto the earth, and the earth could not absorb it. There it lay… rotting without transforming, preserving its own horrifying decay.
The mist in that wood was as natural as the weather—in fact, more like the breath of a creature that had died thousands of times yet still inhaled. The trees did not sway in the wind; they repelled it, refusing its intrusion among their branches.
For every fallen leaf… for every fissure in the soil… there lay a sleeping eye. And in its depths were beings one must never speak of at night—especially in this Nightwood—where only the moon's light penetrates, never the sun's.
Far to the north stood a den of that region's wolves—the Duskwolves. It was not a cave but a filthy cleft in the hollow of a great tree, reserved only for the alpha male and his chosen female. The wooden walls were black and smooth, as if polished by bone.
Inside that lair, the she-wolf prepared to give birth. Her pelt was not merely black but like a curtain—as though night itself had materialized and draped over her as fur. Her breaths issued pale smoke into the forest's damp air. Her body trembled as if she were dying. Then… the den shook.
She let out a long, low howl.
A fully formed puppy—a little she-wolf—joined the pack. Her ash-gray fur looked as if she had been conjured from the ashes of some ancient battle.
Neither the wolves outside nor the mother in labor expected what came next. While the she-wolf licked her newborn and the other cubs gathered around, a cracking sound rang out. A fissure opened high in the towering tree—its girth rivaling a multi-story building.
The split began at the crown and slowly widened; the she-wolf raised her head, and though darkness reigned perpetual here, her eyes had no trouble locating the rift. Bit by bit the crack yawned until wooden splinters rained down, followed by a single, strangely shaped fruit.
It fell more than ten stories, accelerating as it fell, yet the she-wolf did not flinch. As if she knew what would happen, she remained poised, her eyes gleaming. Then, in a mysterious hush, that silver fruit—etched with black sigils—descended gently onto her back, rolled off, and came to rest in her forepaw.
At that moment, the alpha male stood at the den's entrance, staring astonished at the large fruit cradled by the she-wolf—an object the size of a washing machine. Hostility gleamed on his fangs, but his mate's stance forbade him from intervening.
Moments later, the strange fruit began to pulse with uncanny waves. Its skin peeled back layer by layer like an onion made of flesh, until at last it revealed a creature the wolves had never witnessed in Nightwood:
A human infant!
His skin was as pale as the dead. His eyes were silver—twin mirrors piercing the darkness, reflecting visions that did not belong in that place, as though he were dreaming the instant he emerged from the wondrous fruit.
He was slick with the fruit's juices. He did not wail. Instead, he stared with the gaze of a warrior rather than a newborn.
Then—bolt-like sensations shot through his mind. Fleeting visions:
A cigarette burning on an old wooden table.
A hand writing in a notebook in a café.
A gray sky over a nameless city.
A woman's voice calling his name… "Silver… Silver, will you ever quit those filthy cigarettes?"
> "Who… am I? …I smoke cigarettes?"
Infants do not remember, yet he remembered.
Three thousand years… this little one knew he had lived before, as if it had been cast into his mind all at once.
Wars.
Betrayals.
Hearts torn out by hand…
Hysterical laughter amid burning corpses.
Silver…
The name was an inner voice that needed no utterance. He knew himself—but what were these memories that were not dreams? Memories bearing his name, yet he was certain he had never lived them.
The Mad Sovereign… the devourer of hearts, accustomed to crushing them between his teeth as he smiled, for the pulse in his hand was his ecstasy. He spread terror with every step upon earth and beneath the skies.
Silver Al-Korfin.
The last scion of the Crimson House, the ones who had declared the Great War and the Final Epic against all who dared defile Earth and Heaven.
The she-wolf did not flinch. She approached him, sensed his face with gentle curiosity, then licked him as a mother would her pup.
In a language older than words—she accepted him as one of her cubs. That was her decree; no words were needed.
The pack followed. Massive males with dagger-like fangs stood behind the alpha, who deemed the human infant worthy of their brood.
Only the she-wolf stood between them and him, her cubs exploring the newcomer. One look at him stole their courage. Even the alpha male—ordinarily the mightiest of the Duskwolves—did not intervene; he knew the wrath of his mate.
And Silver received both the she-wolf's motherly care and something else: a voice no ear could hear, slipping into his depths and speaking the words:
> "Silver Al-Korfin… your fate was to die at the end of the Seventh Epoch… but I allowed you to be born within me."
> "And who—or what—are you?"
Silver was not surprised; he had already glimpsed the vast mysteries of this world of Heaven and Earth.
> "To you, I am the Nightwood… your mother.
To others, I am Heaven and Earth and all that was born of them."
Her voice continued like a gentle breeze laced with enigma.
Silver reeled at the mystery. "My mother… Heaven and Earth? Weren't three millennia enough for me to earn a harsh life? Damn it."
---
Silver grew in the lair, nursing on the she-wolf's milk. He thought and remembered with full awareness—recalling his past end and wondering why he was reborn. He quelled his anxiety by joining the cubs in play, thanks to the she-wolf who welcomed him. He bathed with them in the forest pools, fashioning clothes from scattered crow feathers to cover his nakedness.
His running was not mere play but a test of strength, tearing and reforging his muscles with every leap. He never learned the wolves' language; Nightwood taught him their customs, the reasons behind their actions, and the ways of their lives.
The Duskwolves—one of many wolf clans in Nightwood—were the only mammals on the forest floor; only tiny insects and plants shared their realm. Above, in the canopy, mysterious crows appeared only amid bloody battles between wolf packs to feast on the vanquished's carcasses, for insects could not sate them.
On a silent day when he was ten, he chased a wounded crow whose left wing was broken; it was the size of a grown man. It did not flee like the wolves but stood like a hunter eyeing its prey. Calmly, Silver slipped behind it, drove his fingers into its back, broke its spine, and twisted it so it collapsed on its injured back. He split open its ribcage as one opens an old book, extracted the still-beating heart, and raised it to his mouth—then bit off a chunk that filled his mouth.
The heart stopped beating. Blood dripped on his chin; he wiped it off by smearing his hand in the soil—instinct or vestige of his former self? He had tasted something deeper than pleasure… a madness and passion. He tasted the past in its brutality. He saw himself anew—devouring the hearts of kings and traitors, laughing as he said:
> "The most real moment of your life… is when your heart stops on the palm of my hand."
---
Seven more years passed of nocturnal life and various events—such as the skirmish over a crow flock that tried to steal a Duskwolf pack's kill from the Fenrir clan. A grim rivalry between wolves and Silver… and so on.
By a still pool, at age seventeen, he sat in meditation. The water reflected his youthful face—but beneath it lay the wolf that emerged from under his skin. A living tattoo sprawled across his body—a wolf in ink that moved whenever Silver's heart beat. From his legs sprouted the wolf's haunches and tail; its forelimbs became his arms, as if his flesh had been woven into a beast within. The wolf's head rested on his chest, watching whoever looked with empty eyes—more alive than any painting.
He gazed into the wolf's eyes in the reflection and saw a figure behind him. Without turning, he recognized it—one of Nightwood's predators. The crows did not hunt prey; they stole it from the wolves that did. Its skin was so dark it seemed stained with congealed blood. Its eyes glowed like embers; its fangs were sharpened bone, crafted from the bones of its prey. It stood on two legs like a human.
The forest fell silent before the hunger in that monster's breath. But a voice inside him spoke:
> "The Wolf King. A lone predator confident in his sovereign might, dwelling boldly by riversides."
Silver paid no heed. He neither thought nor questioned how the forest addressed him as though it wished to guide him.
> "If you wished to help me, you would have let me meet my death."
With a feint to the right then left, he vaulted into the air above that so-called Wolf King. He landed on its back like an acrobat, as if he had been there long ago. He drove his claws into its spine—claws that had grown from the living tattoo, emerging ever more pronounced as a suit of flesh. His chest rose and fell with the motion of the wolf's head, which seemed to want to rend flesh and break free. The tattoo had been a barred beast, yet he ignored its revolt, for what he had seen and experienced of this world's mysteries sufficed to declare that the tattoo and its deeds were acceptable.
He slit the creature's body from behind, as one opens an old letter. The Wolf King's howl was not of pain but of astonishment—as if to say:
> "Did this small thing truly bypass my senses and ambush me?"
Silver dismounted calmly. In his hand lay a heart beating slowly—then stilled. A heart he had ripped from the back of the so-called Wolf King. If he had any supreme skill, it lay in excising hearts. He paused before bringing it to his lips, then bit it—one bite that quelled the wolfish madness within him.
Then he asked himself:
> "This communion… these pulses in my heart—are they the call of my former self or the beast within me?"
"I think you do not wish to grant me an answer… O Forest."
Suddenly another vision surged in his mind:
A city lit by lamps.
A small café.
A mocking face.
A cigarette burned down to its filter.
He clutched his head—an abrupt headache. Memory screamed at him, though he did not yet grasp it… but it intensified and recurred. Though the pain threatened to unhinge him—these visions of a life he did not know, a life so different that he denied his former existence—he soothed himself:
> "The Transcendence System was my creed for three millennia… I was the one who declared the war, and I was the one who ended that epic."
"Are you telling me I lived in a simple apartment with no troubles and no bloodshed? …Are you planting poisons in my mind?"
The Forest—alone speaking to him since birth—answered:
> "By poisons do you mean the headache in your skull? And what has that to do with me?"
Of course, it could not know what lay in Silver's thoughts and memories—even though it claimed to be Heaven and Earth, the realm of continents, seas, and skies. He dismissed its words and pondered something else. In his prior life he had been one of the hundreds of humans granted the Transcendence System by the Supreme Entities—mysterious beings who gave mortals power in exchange for absolute obedience, to wage war or defend the world.
He himself received the system but exceeded its commands and limits, devouring other Transcendents and taming their powers. Thus he became the Mad Sovereign.
But now, in the guise of Nightwood as Heaven and Earth, it guided him to a wholly different system—one of complete freedom, unconstrained by any higher entity: the Harmony System. And as it said:
> "This system is granted only to my children… and you deserve it despite your past life. You may choose to return to being a Transcendent, or you may choose Harmony, which will grant you freedom and temper your madness."
Amid his questions the pack approached. He saw them. But he did more than see them—he saw himself in them, as he saw them in himself. His three-thousand-year past passed before him as he sought to comprehend and embrace his present—his present tinged with utterly foreign memories. He looked at the Wolf King's heart in his hand, crushed it, then murmured:
> "I must truly abandon this habit… for it achieved all my vengeance."
Then he stood. Silver Al-Korfin… returned. Not as an avenger… but returned to live. And who would dare to cross his path in life?
The Duskwolves emerged from the trees one by one, moving with a calm not of caution but of reverence. Their eyes did not show fear but shone with understanding. The she-wolf who had reared him was first; she licked his hand stained with the blood of his fallen prey. She became the first he called family, though she was an animal and a predator. He even gave her a name: Night's Warden. She was tender; she looked at her majestic prey, then into his eyes.
A long moment of silence, as if time itself had paused. Then… she gave a brief, low howl—neither a summons nor a warning, but a note of acknowledgment. The she-wolf's howl declared the birth of a king whom she had nurtured.
Next came the alpha male, with his pointed fangs and single piercing eye. He stood before Silver, bowed his head for a moment, staring at the Wolf King's heart—and then raised a howl.
After him, howls rose from the forest's depths—long, powerful howls from every direction. The very air trembled; the forest responded. The crows folded their wings and fell silent; the other wolves kept still. The watching trees closed their eyes. Other clans received the sign: the Duskwolves were in a sacred phase, and none would dare enter their territory at any cost—for this pack had honor and custom.
The pack proclaimed their acceptance. Silver stood, his body still dripping with blood. But the howls did not frighten him; they awakened something within. Something ancient—a thing that manifested through the tattoo, which had broken the limits of the flesh and risen as a shadow that howled with the pack upon Silver's body. The tattoo's howl had no sound, yet its echo let the pack recognize it as a mysterious proof that Silver was worthy to be a wolf.
It was as if he had returned to a throne from which he had been exiled centuries ago. Silver raised his head to the sky… then howled with them, unmindful of the strangeness of the tattoo's revival.
But Silver's voice was not like theirs. It was deeper, longer, more primal and savage—as if it were not the howl of one wolf but of an entire pack.