The White City
Aurora POV
The sun had barely breached the horizon when the Green-Striped flock took off, their massive leathery wings beating a rhythm that shook the morning dew from the ferns.
I watched them go, a small pang of solitude hitting me as the young female gave a final, screeching trill before banking toward the mountain peaks. They were going to look for food.
I shook myself, a cloud of grey dust puffing around me.
My fur, naturally a blinding white, was now thoroughly coated in a meticulously applied layer of ash and dirt.
To the rest of the world, I looked like a scruffy, pathetic rogue who had missed a few meals.
That was the point. Being a ghost is easier when you look like trash.
“Right,” I thought, my stomach giving a treacherous rumble. “Breakfast.”
I set off into the deeper woods, my paws silent on the moss. I wasn’t just walking through a forest; I was walking through a memory. The White Wolf Kingdom died here eight years ago, and the Forbidden Lands had swallowed the corpse whole.
The deeper I went, the more the trees gave way to stone.
I found myself navigating the streets of what used to be the capital.
My home. It still feels surreal. To anyone else, these ruins would look ancient, as if they had been abandoned for centuries.
The Wild Magic had accelerated the decay, twisting roots through masonry and draping entire buildings in thick, bioluminescent moss.
But I remember what this place used to look like.
I remember the people. And I remember when it all changed.
I stepped over a shattered archway that was being crushed by the roots of an Ironwood tree. I had been here many times before, scavenging or just... remembering. But it never got less strange.
I stalked down the main avenue, my eyes scanning for movement. A Shadow-Stag might be grazing on the clovers in the old market square, or perhaps a Whisper-Hare hiding in the rubble.
I reached the main square. It was a vast, open space now reclaimed by waist-high wildflowers, clovers and jagged rocks. In the center, I stopped.
I looked up.
Looming over the square, broken and majestic, was the remains of the castle.
The spires had been snapped off like twigs, and the remains of the walls were scorched black in the few places where they still stood, scars from when the Draconians brought their fire and the Vampires brought their greed.
It was a hollow shell now, a “graveyard” as the people across the borders called it.
I sat down on my haunches, the ash on my fur blending perfectly with the grey stone.
“Eight years,” I thought, the wind ruffling my disguise. “Eight years since the world watched my people burn.”
This morning, with the silence pressing in and the wyverns gone, it felt less like a game and more like the tragedy it was. I was the last Argent, a little white wolf hiding in the dirt of her own kingdom, hunting rabbits where my people used to walk.
“Enough moping,” I scolded myself, standing up and shaking the mood off. “I need to pull myself together and find some breakfast.”
I lowered my head, catching the scent of a stag near the old barracks. I let the Nature’s Veil wrap around me, dampening my scent and sound until I was nothing more than a shadow in the ruins.
It was time to hunt.
----
Kieran POV
The jungle woke up hungry.
We had left the shelter of the ruined outpost at first light, pushing deeper into the interior of the Forbidden Lands. The map Elian had drafted was accurate regarding the topography, but it couldn’t account for the sheer density of the hostility we faced.
“Contact! Left flank!” Jax’s voice cracked like a whip.
I didn’t even have to look. I swung Storm-Breaker in a wide, defensive arc, the Thunder-Stone embedded in the hilt humming as it discharged a jagged line of static.
A massive, insectoid creature, something between an ant and a nightmare, with mandibles that dripped caustic green saliva, shrieked as the lightning caught it mid-leap.
“Torin!” I barked.
“On it,” the Enforcer grunted. He stepped past me, his Grav-Hammer swinging with deceptive speed. The head of the weapon slammed into the creature’s thorax with a wet crunch, the gravity magic increasing the weight of the impact until the beast was flattened into the moss.
This was the fourth engagement in two hours. We had fought off a pair of Verdant Razor-Backs, a swarm of oversized hornets that spat acid, and now this.
“We can’t keep this pace up,” Silas warned, wiping slime off his blade as the pack regrouped. “The density of monsters is increasing every mile we push toward the center. It’s a meat grinder out here.”
“We keep moving,” I said, sheathing my sword, though I kept my hand on the hilt. “If we stop, we become prey.”
We pushed through a thicket of Ironwood trees so dense they blocked out the sun, navigating by the eerie glow of the fungal canopy. But as we hacked through a wall of vines, the ground beneath my boots changed.
It wasn’t soft loam or moss anymore. It was hard. Unyielding.
I looked down. Beneath the layers of dirt and twisting roots, I saw grey stone. Fitted. Engineered.
“Pavement,” Elara murmured, kneeling to brush away the dirt. “This was a road.”
“A road to where?” Kael asked, looking around nervously at the oppressive greenery.
“Based on Elian’s map, I think it leads to the capital,” I said, a heavy weight settling in my gut. “Let’s follow it.”
We followed the fractured spine of the road for another mile. The roots of the giant trees had shattered the stonework, lifting paved slabs into the air like tomb markers. We were walking on the corpse of a civilization.
The jungle abruptly gave way to a massive clearing, or rather, a drop-off. Where there used to be a bridge, there was nothing. The remaining plateau offered a panoramic view of the valley below.
I stopped. Beside me, I heard Mara’s breath hitch.
Spread out below us, bathed in the strange, shifting light of the wild magic, lay the remains of a city.
“Argentis,” Silas whispered, the name tasting like ash. “The White City.”
But it was unrecognizable.
I had seen maps and pictures of the Argent capital from before the war. It was supposed to be a shining jewel of white marble and silver spires. But it looked like it had been abandoned for a millennium, not just eight years.
The Wild Magic had accelerated the decay to a terrifying degree. The city walls were gone, reduced to mounds of rubble swallowed by the earth. The buildings were hollowed-out husks, their roofs collapsed, their interiors bursting with trees that had grown through the stone floors.
It was a skeleton, picked clean by nature.
“The history books say the Draconians and Vampires burned it,” Kael said quietly, his usual humor gone. “But this... this looks like the earth just ate it.”
“The war started with fire,” I said, my eyes scanning the devastation. “The magic finished the job.”
My gaze drifted to the center of the ruins. A massive structure dominated the skyline, or what was left of it. The castle. It was a jagged, blackened tooth rising from the green sea.
“We need to cross that,” I said, pointing toward the ruins. “The water sources Elian marked are on the other side, near the rise of the mountains. We have to go through the city.”
“Through the city?” Torin looked at the dense, shadowed ruins below. “That place could be crawling with powerful monsters. It’s a perfect hunting ground.”
I was thinking of the rogue, if she was out here, if she was surviving alone in this hellscape, she wouldn’t be hiding in the open fields. She would be where the cover was thickest, where the terrain was treacherous enough to deter tourists but perfect for a ghost.
“We move carefully,” I ordered, adjusting the strap of my pack. “Stay off the main streets where we can. Use the buildings for cover. And for the love of the Moon, watch out for the plants. If it moves, don’t go near it.”
I took one last look at the skeletal remains of the kingdom my father had failed to save.
“Let’s go,” I said, stepping off the ledge and descending into the grave of the White Wolves.
We had been walking for a while when the silence of the city was shattered by a sound that was half-scream, half-chime, a high-pitched, gurgling bleat that echoed off the broken masonry like a death knell. It was the sound of something dying.
“Contact,” Jax spoke through the pack link, his voice barely audible over the wind whistling through the hollowed-out buildings. He raised a hand, pointing toward a crumbling plaza to our east. “Something just died. And it sounded big.”
I didn’t need anyone to tell me where to go.
My wolf was already pulling at the leash, his instincts honed by the memory of the fight at the bridge.
I signaled for silence with a sharp chop of my hand and moved toward the source of the noise.
We wove through the debris of what had once been a bustling street, stepping over moss-covered cobblestones and avoiding the glowing, pulsating veins of roots that had cracked the earth.
The air grew heavier here, thick with the metallic tang of fresh blood.
We reached the edge of a collapsed courtyard, using the remains of a wall as cover. I peered through a fissure in the stone, my heart hammering a rhythm against my ribs that had nothing to do with exertion and everything to do with anticipation.
There she was.