In the quiet sorrow of the den, the wolves mourned, but none felt the pain as deeply as the grey wolf mother. She looked as though she had aged twenty years overnight, her heart heavy with a familiar, crushing grief. This agonizing déjà vu was not the first time she had watched her family torn apart by a far more powerful creature.
Her first six pups and their father had been victims of a cunning green mountain lion. This green-hued stalker was a calculated architect of misery, treating the pack not as a meal, but as a long-term larder. It would systematically memorize the scent of every wolf in a pack, then hunt them down one by one until the group was nothing more than a memory and a well-sated appetite. The grey wolf mother had survived that first nightmare only because the lion chose to spare her. In its cold calculation, pregnant prey was far more valuable alive, as she would eventually birth more food for its future hunts. She had clung to this grim reason for being, sealing away her trauma to focus entirely on the pups she was currently carrying. To protect them from their siblings' fate, she had moved hundreds of kilometers away, finding a new den hidden deep in the forest.
But nothing in this green hellscape was ever truly hidden. Another apex predator, the white tiger, had just found them, flawlessly reenacting her past failures. The mother couldn't decide which was crueler: the lion who ate her pups slowly over time, or the tiger who devoured as many as it could in a single, frenzied night. Now, she lay paralyzed on the damp ground, tears streaming from her yellow eyes as she watched another one of her pups dying. Though they were fully grown, to her, they were still her beloved little ones.
The two remaining pack members, the white wolf and a grey sister, stood by their dying brother, their eyes filled with unadulterated pain. They had just buried what was left of their three other siblings, and now they were forced to watch their brother slowly slip away. They had frantically foraged the surrounding area for herbs, but they knew deep down it was entirely useless.
Their eldest brother was beyond saving. His intestines had been eaten, a limb was missing, and he was only clinging to life through sheer willpower and a useful, though entirely insufficient, healing bloodline ability. He was their pack leader, having taken on their father's role long ago, and had successfully defeated countless threats in the past. But this time, their enemy was a Nascent demonic beast. A single beast at this level of power had managed to completely overwhelm the entire pack in a single night. This was not surprising, since all the wolves were still Fearless beasts, a full realm below Nascent beasts. There was simply nothing to be done.
For days, the eldest brother lay in agonizing torment, watching his remaining siblings desperately try to save him. One night, he finally made his decision. He had held onto a sliver of hope, not for his own survival, but for the safety of the pack, knowing his death would bring them even greater vulnerability. That night, he looked directly into the eyes of his younger brother, the white wolf, and communicated a single, desperate plea: "Kill me, and take our pack away from this place before the white tiger returns."
Stunned, the white wolf's eyes filled with tears, as did his sister's. Their mother, who had been completely unresponsive for days, rose heavily to her feet and looked out of the den, sensing the gravity of the moment. The white wolf, the smartest and most perceptive of them all, knew their time had officially run out.
He raised his paw and slashed down hard at his brother's neck with his sharp claws. Blood splattered instantly across the den, turning his pristine white fur a deep, striking red. As his eldest and most beloved sibling finally died, bringing an end to the agony, the white wolf made a single, unbreakable vow to the heavens: to protect what was left of his pack at all costs, to seek absolute vengeance on those who had caused their suffering, and to make the remaining pack powerful enough to never again face such a calamity.