In the shining spires of Aerelith, the kingdom of gold and glass where skyships danced across the clouds, purity was currency. Bloodline, everything. And none shone brighter in both lineage and legend than House van Hout.
It was into this world, gilded yet rotting beneath its surface, that Ryo van Hout was born, the only son of King Arjen, ruler of the Northern High Court and bearer of the sun-forged crown, and Queen Ayame, last surviving heir of the Sakura Throne in the East. A union of continents. A child of two empires. His birth was a celebration of power, politics, and peace.
But peace is a lie the powerful tell themselves before chaos comes knocking.
On the eve of his naming day, the palace torches flickered green. Shadows bent where they shouldn’t. And from those shadows stepped a man wrapped in feathers and madness, a shaman once exiled under royal decree for practicing forbidden magic. He’d aged like cracked stone, voice like rust grinding on bone.
He spoke one truth and vanished.
“The boy will not wear your crown. He will wear fangs and fur. Your line ends not in glory… but in growls.”
The prophecy was laughed off. For a night.
Then the curse took root.
Ryo didn’t scream when it began. Infants don’t understand pain. But his mother did. The nurses did. His father stood silent as flesh split and snow-white fur spilled from it like oil. Ears long like a wolf. Fangs too sharp. Eyes... yellow, feral and glowing like candles in a cathedral.
They called it a sickness at first. Then a punishment. Then a threat.
Ryo, barely old enough to blink, was stripped of title, name, even bedding — declared feral-born. A freak. His own blood ordered him carried out in silence, bundled like waste in a stained velvet cloth.
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Thrown to the forests like a secret.
But destiny doesn’t bow to crowns.
The forest didn’t kill him. The cold didn’t take him. The wolves sniffed and walked past.
It was an old woman who found him, small, shrieking in the roots of a hollow tree, eyes shining like cursed gold beneath the rain. Her name was Granny Mira, though no soul knew if she had another. Wrinkled like old bark, her arms thin but strong, she lifted him without flinching.
“Gods didn’t curse you, child,” she whispered that night as he fed from a bottle held with shaking hands. “Man did. I’ll not do the same.”
Granny was no noble. Just a relic of forgotten wars and stories half-told. She ran a rundown orphanage in the farwoods, buried past old roads no longer mapped. Children came to her broken and left whole, or at least... better than they arrived.
Ryo was the only furry.
At first, the others avoided him. Fear breeds fast in children. But Granny didn’t allow monsters — only misfits. She raised them like wolves: equal, loud, hungry, and loyal.
The days passed slowly.
Ryo didn’t speak much. His claws made chores hard. His tail broke furniture. But he listened. Always listening. Always watching from the edges of firelight. The other kids called him ghost-pup.
He didn’t mind.
He had a bed. He had soup. He had Granny’s crooked lullabies and stories of old gods who once walked the sky in bare feet. It wasn’t home, but it was enough.
Until the fires came.
It began with the air.
Thicker. Bitter.
By the time Ryo turned six, smoke was a second sky. Whispers of unrest traveled even to the deepwoods. Border towns went dark. Trade stopped. Messengers vanished. The kingdom — his former kingdom — was bleeding itself from the inside.
Some said it was rebellion. Others, plague. A few, quieter voices said the gods were returning to collect their debts.
Then one night, the world came to them.
No banners. No horns. Just the sound of hooves and death.
Figures in black armor broke through the trees like demons from Granny’s bedtime stories. No emblems. No words. Just swords and smoke.
Ryo woke to screams. Not fear — fury. Granny stood in the hallway, barefoot, a rusted hatchet in one hand, holding the door with the other.
“Run, pup,” she snarled, blood already staining her shawl. “As far as your legs can take you.”
He didn’t ask. Didn’t wait.
The walls behind him cracked. The cries of children — his pack — echoed into chaos. He felt the heat on his back before he saw the flames in the windows.
He ran.
Through ash and shattered wood. Past the creek where he once caught frogs. Over the ravine where they buried their secrets. Through thorn and mud and shadow.
He ran until his lungs felt carved from glass. Until the screams were memories. Until there was nothing left behind but embers and guilt.
And even then, he kept running.
Because something inside him knew — the prophecy had only just begun...