Chapter One: Blood Curse

The night the blood curse took his father, Rían was only seven.

Rain battered the thatched roof of their cottage like fists from some forgotten god, and the wind howled through the Ossory hills with a voice older than language. His mother had barred the door, stuffed the windows with herbs, and wept silently by the fire, praying in a language she never taught him.

Outside, something monstrous screamed—half-man, half-beast, wholly lost.

Rían remembered the golden eyes. Even through the slats of the door, they burned like twin moons, familiar and terrible. His father had always carried that fire behind his gaze, though it had dimmed in the final years. But now it blazed unchecked, a furnace of fury and fear.

“Don’t open it,” his mother whispered. “Whatever you hear, whatever you think you see—he’s not your father tonight.”

But the boy had already seen enough to understand the blood curse. The stories weren’t just stories. The blood of the wolves ran in their family still, and tonight, it demanded tribute.

By morning, there was only silence.

They found the father’s clothes torn and bloodied by the edge of the wood, claw marks etched into the stones as if he’d tried to hold onto something human. His body was never found.

Some said he ran off mad. Others said the fae, or the Devil himself, had taken him.

But Rían knew the truth.

The wolf of the blood curse had taken him.

And one day, it would come for Rían, too.

Blood Curse: The Weight of Silence

The morning fog clung to the stone streets of Kilkenny like a secret, muting the world in shades of grey. Church bells rang the hour, and townsfolk passed like ghosts through the mist, their breath rising in wisps as if the town itself were exhaling.

Rían mac Laignech kept his head down, the hood of his coat pulled low over his brow. His boots echoed on the cobbled path as he made his way toward the castle, his tools slung across his back. He had worked the stone there for nearly a decade—repairs, restorations, whatever they would pay him for. The castle never stopped crumbling, and Rían never stopped fixing it.

He liked the work. Stone didn’t flinch when you touched it. It didn’t ask questions. It simply remembered.

Kilkenny Castle loomed ahead, black against the pale dawn, its ancient battlements still sharp despite centuries of weather. As he crossed beneath the shadow of the southern tower, a shiver ran up Rían’s spine—not from cold, but from something older.

He paused.

The wind had shifted.

There it was again—that smell. Damp earth. Pine. The sharp metallic bite of something wild.

He turned slowly, scanning the courtyard.

Nothing. Just a pigeon fluttering away from a windowsill.

But his hands were already shaking.

He shoved them into his pockets.

Keep it in, he told himself. Breathe. Focus.

But the wolf stirred beneath his skin, restless. Hungry.

“Morning, Rían!”

He flinched. A voice broke through his thoughts like a splash of cold water.

It was Connor, the groundskeeper’s son, grinning under a mop of red hair. “You alright, man? You look like you saw a ghost.”

Rían forced a smile. “Didn’t sleep well.”

Connor laughed. “Well, don’t go falling off the tower again. Boss still talks about the last time—‘mad bastard damn near broke his back,’ he says.”

Rían grunted in reply and moved on. He didn’t remember falling. He’d woken in the woods two miles from town, his clothes torn, his hands bloodied. The sheep mutilated that night were blamed on feral dogs.

He knew better.

The wolf-blood was awakening.

And something in the wind was calling him back to the forest.

The Breaking Moon

The forest was darker than it should have been.

Rían’s breath steamed in the cold air as he pushed deeper into the ancient woods east of Kilkenny through the underbrush. He didn’t remember how he got there—only that the ache had started again. In his bones. In his blood. A pull, like the tide calling the shore back into the sea.

He should have gone home. Locked himself away.

Instead, his feet had carried him here, to the old hunting paths, the ones his father warned him never to follow.

“Some places remember,” his father once said. “Some places call you back when you’ve tried too hard to forget.”

The moon broke through the clouds—a silver eye staring down.

And the pain came.

It started in his spine, a sharp jolt like lightning through marrow. Rían staggered, fell to his knees, gasping. His fingernails split and bled, claws pushing through torn skin. His jaw ached, bones shifting beneath flesh like writhing snakes.

He screamed—but it came out wrong.

Too low. Too wild.

The forest fell silent.

No birds. No wind. No sound but his own ragged breaths and the crack of changing bones.

He tried to fight it. To hold onto the shape of himself. The man. The name.

Rían. I am Rían.

But the wolf didn’t care for names.

It only cared for freedom.

Fur erupting along his spine, muscles swelling, limbs stretching into monstrous form. His eyes burned gold, catching the moonlight like a torch in the dark.

And then—he wasn’t Rían.

He was hunger. Motion. Scent and sound.

He ran.

Through branches and shadow, over stone and root. The wind in his ears was like music. Every heartbeat of the forest pulsed in his skull. The world was sharper, crueler, more alive.

He came upon a clearing.

A lone stag stood there—tall, proud, ancient.

They locked eyes.

And something in the beast’s gaze stopped him. Not fear, but knowing.

The stag turned and vanished into the trees.

The wolf did not follow.

Instead, it howled—a long, low cry that shook the leaves from the trees and echoed through the hills like a memory awakened.

Somewhere, far behind him, a candle blew out.