thief of fate-Chapter 45: Predator Awakening

There stood the mountain... Mount Arenval. A black mass facing the moon.

Raphael raised his hand and pulled a tightly sealed leather scroll from his cloak. On the table that never left his balcony, he spread the parchment and held a quill made from the feathers of the northern ravens. Then he dipped it into ink that does not dry easily.

He wrote:

"To my brother... King Yaram,

From the shield of the academy.

I have found evidence of one of the Black Moon’s sites

in the heights of Arenval.

The Black Moon left its mark.

Send those you trust to survive, not just those you love.

Raphael"

He carefully rolled the message and sealed it with the academy’s emblem: a shield splitting the sun in half. Then he summoned a messenger bird a gray eagle with glassy eyes placed the letter in its claws, and released it into the king’s sky.

In Yaram’s palace, the sun had not yet risen, but the guards heard the king’s footsteps before the door opened. Yaram woke early, not out of duty, but because sleep had long found no place in his heart. Dreams haunted him... those in which he was not a king, but merely... a man burning.

When the bird entered, the king opened the letter with a steady hand. His eyes passed over the words in silence, but his face... frowned, then calmed, then remained silent.

He placed the letter on the table and stared at the engraved emblem: the Black Moon.

"Arenval..." he said quietly.

He sat on his throne and stared into the void. Inside, he boiled not with fear, but with a yearning to understand. That name... the Black Moon.

He rose and called: "Argan."

The military commander entered, his armor gleaming. "Yes, my liege?"

"I want an expedition to Mount Arenval. Forty soldiers. No trainees only the elite of the elite."

Argan bowed. "Why the mountain?"

The king handed him the letter. "Because Raphael discovered something."

Argan read it, and signs of dread appeared on his face. "And if it’s true? If the Black Moon really left something there?"

"Then let us know... before someone else does."

The expedition departed at dawn the next day. The path to Arenval was long, full of fog and rocks. The soldiers didn’t talk much; only Argan stared into the horizon, as if expecting the mountain to one day speak to him.

The first thing they noticed as they approached the mountain... was the smell. 𝕗𝚛𝚎𝚎𝐰𝗲𝗯𝗻𝚘𝚟𝚎𝗹.𝕔𝐨𝕞

It wasn’t the scent of death. It was deeper. Something between decay and a curse.

One of the soldiers stopped and covered his nose. "This... isn’t natural."

Argan whispered, "Keep your eyes open. Nothing we face here will be like what we’ve been taught."

When they reached the cave Raphael had identified, it wasn’t an open door, but a maw... as if the earth itself had split open.

Argan ordered a careful descent. As soon as they entered, the light changed. It became more blue, more... miserable.

Inside felt like a grave.

Then they saw it.

Gold.

Massive amounts of it, scattered in clumps unorganized, but shining as if laughing.

And beside the gold...

Corpses.

Mutilated, burned some torn apart, some seemingly decayed for centuries.

A soldier muttered, "Are those... humans?"

Another replied with a trembling voice, "One of them has no face... literally."

But Argan wasn’t staring at the corpses... he was looking at the symbols carved on the walls.

Circles, moons, eyes, and a hand reaching from darkness.

He whispered, "This... is a warning."

Argan stepped into the stone corridor with hesitant steps, and the air grew heavier as if the mountain’s walls were breathing around them. Everything inside seemed dead, and yet, something was alive... alive in a way unbefitting of life.

The corpses were scattered in corners some covered in mold-colored crust, others so thin it seemed their blood, flesh, even their souls had been drained to the last drop.

One soldier approached, cautiously prodding the shoulder of a corpse with his spear.

A crack sounded.

The bone didn’t break... it collapsed like ash.

"These... aren’t corpses. They’re husks... human husks!" the soldier screamed, stepping back to vomit while the others remained silent.

Argan’s eyes wandered until he spotted something that wasn’t gold.

There... sat a massive body, crouched, as if a creature had been carved from stone. Its gray skin was cracked, and black, pulsating veins emerged from between the fissures.

On its forehead... twisted, massive horns coiled like bone. Its hands were long, ending in black claws that looked capable of tearing through stone.

Argan approached, his heart pounding with a deadly slowness. Something inside him screamed: "Run."

But it was too late.

Two red eyes opened, as if they had come from a sleeping hell, and the cracked body moved.

The darkness grew not from the absence of light, but from the presence of something... that extinguished existence itself.

"Soldiers... prepare yourselves!"

But he didn’t finish the sentence — the first man was pulled in, at a speed no one saw, as if the air itself had devoured him.

A scream... then silence.

"Where is he?!" another shouted.

But the answer came as a rasp... behind him.

His body was torn in half, and his blood sprayed across the gold, which seemed not disturbed in fact, it seemed to smile.

The hunt had begun.

Erkalos wasn’t just a killer. He was a nightmare moving through stone.

He twisted, leapt, pounced from shadows, and killed in moments. Every soldier who thought himself a hero fell before he could grasp what was happening.

Argan, with his long years of experience, realized the horrific truth: We’re not fighting a beast...

He ran, trying to gather what men he could. "Follow me! Don’t fight him! Run!"

But one of them, a young man with tear-filled eyes, raised his sword and shouted: "I won’t run! I’ll face him!"

Then... silence.

Only his head remained, rolling to Argan’s feet.

They ran through the corridors of the cave, ignoring the gold, the corpses, the screams. All they thought of was escape.

They reached the first corridor, but there... stood Erkalos.

He wasn’t just chasing them he was playing.

He stood tall, his breaths hissing from cracks in his chest.

But when he looked at the corpses he hadn’t yet consumed those he had left in the corner of the room...

He smiled.

He began to absorb it.

He didn’t eat it, but rather, an invisible energy was pulled from it—faint lines of light.

He changed.

His skin began to boil, harden, shatter, then reform itself. His horns grew longer, his back hunched, then straightened even more.

His right hand extended, his claw grew longer, and his face... split down the middle, a vertical line, as if another mouth had been born.

He screamed.

A scream not meant for human ears. It belonged to another world.

Arghan stepped back, blood on his cheek, his eyes following him in shock. But he knew one thing:

I won’t make it out unless I try now.

He turned his back and ran with all the strength he had left, carrying a wounded soldier on his shoulder, with two more stumbling behind.

But he didn’t get far... before he was caught.

He looked up... and saw the claws.

He thought it was his end.

But they didn’t tear him apart.

Erkalos, in a rare moment of hesitation, stopped.

His eyes were on Arghan’s body... no, on his soul.

But suddenly, he turned away... as if something more important had called him.

The shock in his eyes shifted to a twisted smile.

He shouted in a hoarse, fractured voice, one that didn’t seem to belong to the era of mankind:

"It is time... to emerge."

Blood covered Arghan’s face.

His breaths were like knives, his heart pounded so fiercely he could hear it, but his mind was fixed on one thought:

Get out alive. No matter the cost.

Behind him, he heard the echo of claws on stone... then silence.

It wasn’t reassurance, but a warning. Erkalos hadn’t stopped because he couldn’t catch him... but because he no longer cared.

When Arghan emerged from the cave’s mouth, dawn was creeping in, but its light felt faint, as if the world had lost its color.

He had only one soldier with him still breathing, half-conscious, and half his body bleeding.

The next day, Arghan knelt at the gates of the capital, his body still trembling, his eyes frozen.

He was taken directly to the palace, and there, before King Yaram, he began to speak... but not in complete words. In a hoarse voice, with eyes that could not forget:

"Monster... gray... death is rising... not gold... it’s a trap... we weren’t the first to go... we won’t be the last to die..."

The king said nothing. But he understood. Something had awakened. And the Black Moon had a hand in it.

Far from the capital, in the shadows of Mount Arinval, Erkalos began to change.

His skin was no longer just cracked, but pulsing. Every cell was breathing, every ancient flaw in his design reshaping itself.

He squatted between the rocks and closed his eyes.

The vision swept over him... it wasn’t a memory, but something older.

A whispering voice... faint blue light... the Black Moon’s emblem on a broken stone... corpses around it, and voices of oath...

"I was denied completion..." "But now... I have returned."

What he felt was more than just power. It was ascension... it was a different kind of memory, not built on experience, but on hunger, on waiting.

He had waited... more than two hundred years.

All that time, he hadn’t been asleep... but imprisoned in a special kind of confinement, denied of "identity."

But now... his features were starting to become clear.

"I... am not just a body. I am legacy. I am the Predator."

Predator. The word was not just a title. It was a rank.

The world of monsters didn’t recognize names, only standings. And the "Predator" wasn’t classified... he classified others.

He opened his eyes, and the sky was above him.

He rose slowly, his body lifting with weight.

There was a place... he saw it in his new memory: a black stone tower, tilted, half-buried in the ground... the Black Moon’s seal.

The nearest base. The closest to him... and the first to fall beneath him.

"I will declare it... my home. And my dominion."

And he began to walk.

His footsteps left scorch marks in the ground, and the rocks trembled beneath him.

The small scavenger beasts hiding in the cracks either fled or died without his touch.

Nature understands predators faster than humans do.

He walked without a map, but the place called to him. As if his blood knew the way.

And on the horizon, beneath a slanted mountain, he saw the shadow of the stone tower, and the faded Black Moon emblem on its iron door.

Erkalos smiled, and his claw touched the stone:

"I have returned... and now, let the new age begin."