1 Prologue
The deep echo of chiming bells blazoned across the snowy mountains and the oceanic skies. People started stepping outside of their huts and cottages to witness the event.
The temperature was the coldest of the era of Theodore's kingdom. The snow piled up on the path, and covered the pine trees, basking everything in white.
A royal chariot moved forward, embellished with sparkling gold and platinum. Four guards to each side, protecting the shine of it. With the carved deities and symbolic pictures on the four-wheeled carriage drawn by the two white horses. Their golden embroidered leash wrapped neatly around their necks showed the royalty. A velvety silk piece of linen on the horses professed the royalty. The wheels of fortune were decorated with garlands of yellow and white flowers. The eye blinders kept the horses focused on the path and blocked their way to get into other interrupting contacts.
The rider who fetches the chariot has grim expressions on his face. Something was on it, destined to meet its fate. His work was carrying the chariot to its desired place, which didn't give him a right to feel more than that. It headed towards the river which has been said to be cursed. It has become essential to break the curse and spread peace across the earthy realms. The curse had been floating across the town since ancient times. It was the deadly gift from the ancestors of immortal creatures. It was like a disgrace to their immortality.
The royal chariot carried a soul-less body to its destined journey, which is known as submerging in the sacred river as a ritual.
The body was covered with a piece of silver and golden threads of woven cloth and a few petals of flowers layered over it. The chariot always carried some sacred dead bodies for salvation.
Its believed to be auspicious for the living being on the earth and the magical realms are found on it.
This time it was different. The dead body didn't belong to some random human being but someone sacred and powerful personality. If it is sacrificed, all future generations shall live a prosperous life without any curses.
As the chariot reached the river, a sudden dusty wind started flowing across, rustling through the leaves and trees, rippling the surface of calm waters, far away from the crowd of people. The area was restricted to enter for anyone else than the Chariot.
The horses halted abruptly. The soil mixed in the air, clouding the path ahead of them. The flower petals over the dead body flew off, spreading across the ground. The sacred cover on the dead body flicked up, as the wind peeled it off the body, uncovering it. The rider got down and looked back to find the wheel stuck in a dried puddle. He went behind and started pushing it forward with all of his strength. He succeeded when the wheel rolled ahead from the puddle and his eyes fell on the carrier.
The body was gone!
He gasped in terror.
Where it could have gone? Or did anyone steal it?
The dead body was full of magical powers and blessings derived from the deities.
As he looked around, not a single sight of a human was found there.
His gait told him to leave the place and his feet moved ahead, getting on the chariot and holding the leash when he found someone standing in front of the horses, with his back faced to it. He curiously looked at the man, wrapped in a long white piece of cloth and hair reaching till his shoulders.
The mysterious anonymous person turned back. A dangerous smirk appeared on his pale face.
His eyes widened in horror after watching the person turning into a hazardous-shaped reptile, protruding its tail, snaking it around the rider, tensing the surroundings.
In a matter of seconds, the air around becomes calm. Blood splattered everywhere, mixing it with the red velvet cover on the horse's back. The leash from the rider's hands slid off and his body slumped in pieces.
The monstrous reptile came back into the human's shape and stood at the banks of the river looking at the territory ahead of him, with his bloodied backbone and a cynical smirk on his face. It was after all his trap to reach there, so he could begin something fatal.
He crossed the river in a snap of the fingers, walking through the forest of the other side, leaving behind the city of sinful bloodied vampires, disappearing to ephemeral and making his presence when it's needed, adapting the shades around him, and marched towards the emperor's palace, where the supreme royal Alpha of the Blue Moon pack resides.
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On a night of auspicious full moon appearing in the star-studded sky, everyone was drowned in some joyful events. The soft breeze embraced every desire and the beating hearts together.
At the emperor's palace, everyone was busy with the event of the Goddess of the moon, as it was an auspicious day to find peace, joy, and life. The town across was decorated with small lamps, people carried batons as a sign of the goddess's blessing. The heat of the volcano sprawled among the territory, distinctively showing its presence. Under the warm embrace of it, everyone was living carefree, without any fear.
A few wolf cubs were playing together around the bonfire, with a small tough fruit which was difficult to break but its round shape intrigues the little ones to explore more than eat it. The cute furry cubs were so much indulged in their play that they didn't notice someone was watching them.
Suddenly a cub's attention went towards it. It saw a bird sitting on a tree branch. As amusing as it can feel and stood watching it. The cub's eye's widened looking at its cute features yet filled with mystery. The big round eyes of the bird fascinated the cub to go near it. The way that bird gazed dartingly at it without blinking, the cub lured towards it.
Theround-faced bird rotated its head while keeping the stare at the cub.
It intrigued the cub a lot that its tiny paws started moving towards the bird. It has never seen a bird like this before. It wanted to play with that bird. With sudden few little hops, the cub reached near the bird and saw it flying inside the dense forest. The cub chased behind the bird, in an attempt to catch it but it kept flying ahead. Sometimes flying over him, near to the ground while sometimes flying in a zigzag way. The cub kept running and chasing behind it, falling over the ground, over the small rocks which were huge for its size, through the tangling of the branches, to play with the bird, without noticing how far it has come away from its cub's pack, crossing the cursed river.
Suddenly the bird halted in the air and turned into a hazardous frightful shape. The mysterious cute features vanished like they never existed and took the form of a monstrous, anyone shouldn't cross their path. The cub was baffled looking at the reptile-like creature in front of it and saw the creature growing out bloodied horns. Its two conjoint tongues slurped in and out, slowly prowling towards the cub.
The cub innocently looked at the giant devil in front of the eyes, sitting on its paws with mouth slightly parted, ears perked out, unaware of the danger. In those small dewy eyes held a reflection of that monstrous demon, and a heavy exhale leaving out of its mouth, snarling. Its long pointed sharp poisonous fangs gleamed in the full moon's light.
When other cubs too followed the cloning of the bird in the forest and witnessed a monstrous reptile demon in front of them. The clones dissolved in the air one by one, stumbling the little paws facing an ill-fated trap.
They saw their sibling cub lying in the pool of blood with its organs ripped apart.
A long tail of multiple spiralled around the cubs, slowly snaking their existence around the death.
In a few moments, a loud growling shook up the dense forest with a negligible squeal of cries of those cubs and its blood tainting the sacred place of the Goddess of the moon.
Time has always been cruel to those who had vanished in history!
After five hundred years, everything changed except the buried secrets. The penance of the burning past has suppressed long for the revenge left to be taken, waiting for the time right time to emerge.
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