The fire had burned low, but the stars burned brighter.
Jackie stood at the edge of the circle, the scorched soil still warm beneath his feet, though the night wind whispered cool across the high plains. His wolf mask rested against his side, its charred edges cooled, its surface kissed with faint silver veins that pulsed like fading lightning. Around him, the tribe had fallen silent again.
Then the chieftain stepped forward.
Chief Nyaka was tall and weathered, his white hair braided with eagle bones, his arms marked with the blue-inked spirals of the Old Hunt. In his hand, he held a woven armband—a circle of braided cord made from wolfsinew and dyed juniper fibers. Sacred. Earned only through trial and fire.
He raised it high.
"By the rite of ember," Nyaka intoned, voice deep as mountain stone, "by the fire of the ancestors, and the witness of all gathered clans—Jackie, of no known father, bearer of Wolfblood spark—you are named among the warrior circle."
A cheer erupted.
The older warriors thumped their spears into the earth. Young ones whooped and raised bone whistles. Drums thundered like heartbeats. Yara was the first to reach him, her dark braid whipping behind her as she threw her arms around his shoulders and whispered, "You did it, you idiot."
He smiled, dazed.
When Nyaka fastened the armband around his upper bicep, Jackie felt a pulse—not just emotion, but power. The cord tightened briefly of its own accord, a breath of ancestral energy threading through it.
Power-level moment.
A warmth surged from the band to his chest, then down into his bones. For a moment, Jackie felt every person in the circle—their joy, their pain, their breath. His senses sharpened. He heard the creak of leather straps, the faint murmur of leaves even in the distance. His bloodline spark flared, and he knew—he had leveled up. It wasn't just symbolic.
He was now of the tribe.
Even Kaden, seated alone on the edge of the crowd, hand bandaged and face half-shadowed by torchlight, gave him a slow nod. A reluctant one—but a nod all the same.
Jackie returned it, tight-lipped. No gloating. Only acknowledgment.
The path ahead would still be thorned.
But for the first time in his life, Jackie felt seen.
Later that night, as the celebration roared on, Jackie slipped away.
The sky was black velvet streaked with drifting cloud. Smoke from the feast-fires curled upward, rich with roasted hare and pine-ale. Flutes and drums echoed through the trees, laughter rising like crows startled into flight.
But Jackie didn't feel like feasting.
His hand still throbbed beneath the bandage, though the burn had faded to a steady ache—an echo of the flame's touch. He found a quiet place by the firepit where the ember trial had been held, now no more than cooling ash and scattered sparks.
He knelt.
The wolf mask sat in front of him, its eyes blank, yet haunting. The crack down its snout gleamed faintly, like a scar of silver moonlight.
Then—a whisper of movement behind him.
He turned.
It was Rahu.
The old mystic moved like a shadow slipping between trees. His wolf-pelt cloak brushed the ground. In his hand, something small and white—an owl feather, long and curved, inked at the tip with midnight dye.
"You stood firm in the flame," Rahu said softly. "So now, the spirits will speak clearer."
He knelt beside Jackie and placed the feather gently across the mask's snout.
"A gift from the spirit-owl. She only leaves a feather when courage is true."
Jackie stared at it, awed. The moment felt... bigger than the ceremony, deeper than the praise. As if something beyond the tribe had seen him.
The air shimmered faintly.
He felt it again—that rising hum in his blood, like a distant drumline beneath his ribs.
"Will it change me?" Jackie asked quietly.
Rahu smiled. "It already has."
Then he rose and melted back into the dark, leaving Jackie alone once more.
Jackie closed his eyes and breathed deeply, letting the cool wind fill his lungs. The ember in him hadn't gone out. If anything, it had grown. Beneath his skin, under the pain, something stirred. Something older than the clan, older than blood.
He didn't know if it was wolf, or flame, or both.
But he knew it would come again.
The celebration stretched deep into the night.
Warriors danced the Riverstep around the coals, and flutes played the tune of the Nine Hunts. Children painted crescent tattoos with berry-ink across their cheeks. Mothers offered rootbread and wine-meat to the ancestors on polished stones. Jackie watched it all with quiet wonder.
For once, he wasn't outside looking in.
He was part of the tribe now.
Yara found him again near the long tables, her face flushed from dancing.
"You keep drifting off," she said, offering him a cup of pine-root tea. "Like you're listening to something we can't hear."
Jackie took it with a nod. "Maybe I am."
She tilted her head. "You're still not used to this, are you?"
"I've never had a place before. It feels... loud."
She laughed. "Get used to it. Tribal blood runs loud."
He smiled at that, watching her walk back into the firelight.
Is that what I am now? One of them? he wondered.
A warrior. A bloodline bearer.
A spark among embers.
That night, as the fires died low, Jackie dreamed.
He stood in a forest thick with mist. The trees were ancient, their bark carved with spiraling runes that shimmered silver. The wind moaned through the branches like an old song, and in the distance—a shape.
A wolf.
But not any wolf.
It was enormous, its fur black as void, its eyes twin orbs of glowing silver. Antlers rose from its skull like the tines of a fallen moon. Its breath fogged the air with starlight.
It stepped forward. Jackie didn't run.
The wolf stared at him.
Then—it bowed its head.
And whispered, not in voice, but in thought.
"The path is waking. The twins shall rise. Blood must burn... or fall to ash."
Jackie jerked awake, breath sharp in his lungs, hands trembling.
The fire outside had gone out.
The moon was gone behind cloud.
And in the distance—somewhere deep in the hills—a howl rose again.
Not wolf.
Not man.
Something in between.
End of Chapter 9