Chapter Two: Ashes and Antlers
Ashes and Antlers.
The morning light was cold and cruel.
Rían woke face-down in damp moss, his body aching as if he’d been crushed beneath a landslide. His throat burned. Every breath felt like glass.
He rolled onto his back, gasping. The trees above him blurred, swaying gently in the breeze. Birds chirped somewhere distant, but even they sounded hesitant, like they weren’t sure if the forest was safe again.
His hands were filthy. Blood under his fingernails. Mud on his skin. The remnants of claws—not gone, but dulled, like a memory he couldn’t quite shake.
He was naked.
Not far away, a stream murmured over stones. He crawled to it on unsteady limbs, splashing cold water over his face, his chest. The reflection that met him in the water was barely his own.
Scratches ran across his collarbone. His lip was split. His eyes—still gold, still glowing faintly in the light.
Not all the way back, he thought. Not yet.
Something shifted beside the stream. Rían froze.
It was a carcass—half-buried in leaves. Not a stag.
A fox.
Its throat was torn open. Eyes wide. Blood pooled beneath its body, still tacky.
He dropped to his knees.
No. No, no, no…
He’d lost control. Again. Maybe it was just the fox. Maybe not. He couldn’t remember.
He could smell things now—faint traces left in the undergrowth. Rabbits, badgers, a hunter’s piss-marked boots. And something else…
Perfume.
Faint. Herbal. Woven with something ancient—rowan? mugwort?—carried on the breeze like an echo.
Someone had been here.
And whoever it was… they knew.
He staggered to his feet and scanned the treeline, heartbeat pounding.
Then, in the moss at the clearing’s edge, he saw it:
A footprint.
Small. Bare.
Next to it, pressed into the earth like a sign left on purpose, was a single silver coin etched with Celtic knotwork and the head of a wolf.
He picked it up. It was warm.
And somewhere far off, hidden in the folds of the waking world, a woman’s voice whispered a name:
“mac Laignech.”
Ashes and antlers.
The Rowan Path to Ashes and Antlers
Rían stood at the edge of the clearing, the silver coin heavy in his hand.
He didn’t recognize the symbol—though it stirred something deep in his blood, something older than thought. The wolf’s head was stylized, ringed in knots, its mouth open as if howling or devouring the moon. He tucked it into his coat, now draped over his shoulders after retrieving it from where he’d stashed it in a hollow tree. His boots were gone, but he didn’t need them.
The forest would guide him.
He crouched by the footprint again. Bare. Delicate. Human. But the earth whispered more: a presence that didn’t disturb the wild, only passed through it, like mist moving through trees.
She wasn’t afraid of you, he thought.
Most people reeked of fear. Even from across a room, Rían could smell the sour tang of it under their cologne or cheap ale. But this person—whoever she was—had walked through the clearing during or just after his transformation. Calm. Measured. Unshaken.
That chilled him more than any memory of blood.
He began to follow the trail.
The prints wove through thick brush and between oaks so old their bark curled like the pages of forgotten books. As he moved, the forest changed. The air grew still. Warmer. Almost… watchful.
He passed through a thicket of rowan trees, red berries clinging like droplets of fire. Beneath them, someone had strung charms: feathers tied with black thread, bones etched with sigils, and strips of linen inked in ogham.
Warding symbols, he realized. Old ones.
Not meant to keep something out—but to mark a path.
His pulse quickened.
Ahead, through a narrow copse of yew, he glimpsed a clearing—circular, unnaturally perfect. At its center stood a standing stone, half-swallowed by ivy. It leaned slightly, carved with spiral patterns and fading script he couldn’t read but instinctively understood.
At the foot of the stone was a pile of ashes and antlers. Sacrifices from the forest. To keep his kind away? Or to appease them?
He stepped into the ring.
The moment his foot touched the moss, the wind died. The world held its breath.
Then—
A whisper.
“You followed.”
He turned.
No one there.
But something moved at the edge of sight—a flicker of white cloth, a braid of raven-black hair vanishing behind a tree.
Rían’s heart pounded.
You’re not alone in this anymore.
He didn’t know if it was a promise or a threat.
But either way, it had begun.
Watcher of the Blooded
Aoife Byrne watched from the trees as the wolf passed through the rowan path, just as she knew he would.
He moved like something caught between worlds—shoulders tense, eyes scanning with feral sharpness, feet silent even on brittle leaves. The wolf-blood was strong in this one. Stronger than she’d expected.
Stronger than he realized.
She held her breath until he stepped into the circle of standing stones. Only then did she relax her grip on the charm in her palm—a carved wolf fang wrapped in silver wire, cool and thrumming softly with old energy.
He doesn’t know what he is yet, she thought. But he’s close.
The signs had led her here.
Months of research. Cross-referenced genealogies. Local myths. Church records buried beneath layers of redacted scripture. And at the center of it all: Rían mac Laignech—last known descendant of the Ossorian bloodline.
The Wolves of Ossory.
The cursed.
The sacred.
Even among folklore scholars, the name drew only laughter or wary silence. Shapeshifters, they called them—men who became wolves through ancient pacts or pagan rites. But Aoife knew better. It wasn’t magic. Not entirely. It was inheritance. A blood-born bond with the land, fractured by time and persecution.
And now, it had returned. In him.
She stepped back, letting the shadows swallow her again. The charm in her hand pulsed once more—hot this time. The runes along its edge glowing faintly.
They’re watching too, she thought. The ones who remember. The ones who wait.
The spirits of the forest. The old blood. The echoes of the druids who’d once walked these woods with wolves at their side. They had not forgotten.
And neither had the hunters.
Aoife’s fingers moved to the satchel at her hip, brushing over a bundle of warding herbs and a worn leather journal. The last entry, scrawled hastily the night before, read:
“He howled. The stag did not run. The line holds. The storm is near.”
Her time was short. Rían would soon demand answers—or worse, try to run.
But he couldn’t run from his nature.
No one ever could.
