The ash desert breathed like a dying beast.
A slow, uneven pulse ran through the land, making the fine grey dust shiver beneath the pale, unmoving moon.There were no stars in this sky.Only that cold lunar lantern hanging above the world like an unblinking eye, its frozen light stretching across the horizon and peeling open every shadow.
Across this wasteland moved a creature.
A wolf.Or something that had once resembled one.
Its fur, once dark and thick, had stiffened into plates of blood-soaked bristles.Half its face was missing, the skin torn away to reveal bone exposed to the open air. White ridges split and cracked, stained by dried streaks of ancient blood. The lower jaw gleamed faintly in the moonlight, like the polished remnant of some forgotten battle relic.
Its breath dragged from its throat in slow, guttural vibrations.Its body was broken and torn, yet it advanced without hesitation, as though nothing in this dead world could justify stopping.
Its eyes, two burning fragments of red, carved through the darkness with hunger sharpened to a near divine intensity.
Forward.Hunt.Break.Consume.
The dust rose beneath its paws, clinging to its torn skin and mingling with its blood, leaving behind a smeared trail that looked like a wound ripped open in the desert itself.
No sound existed here.No wind.No voices.Only the grind of its movement and the steady, violent beat of its monstrous heart.
Then a scent slid across the stillness.
Scent of blood.Fresh.Warm.Alive.
The wolf froze.Its exposed jaw twitched.Its nostrils flared despite the missing flesh.
Closer.Mine.
It launched forward.
The creature became a streak of shadow leaping across the dunes.Ash erupted into small spiraling vortices behind it.The beast moved with a grace that contradicted its wounds, as if the pain belonged to another body entirely.
Inside its ribs the hunger swelled like a drumbeat.
Stronger.I must grow stronger.Feed the bone. Feed the flesh. Feed the void.
Time dissolved as it ran.Minutes could have been hours.Hours could have been moments.
Then it saw the figure.
A giant of white fur, standing in the hollow of a dune as if rooted there by ancient law.The moon cast its glow over the creature, revealing a body that dwarfed the landscape.Two and a half meters tall.Muscles rolling beneath the white coat like the shifting of buried mountains.Arms so long they nearly touched the ground.Hands ending in claws of thick, curved ivory, each capable of shearing stone.
Its eyes flickered with a haunting light.
Two cold flames of blue burned in their depths.Eyes that did not simply look, but judged.
The colossus was devouring something.A twisted heap of flesh that no longer resembled a living being.Blood dripped from the creature's jaw in slow, deliberate threads.
The wolf stepped closer, its shadow sliding across the sand.
The giant turned its head toward the sound.
Silence broke.
The white beast opened its mouth and roared.The roar burst across the desert like a physical force, sending waves of ash rolling outward. The moonlight trembled.The land shuddered.
The wolf did not step back.
Good. You are worthy.
They clashed.
The giant struck first.Its arm crashed into the ground, and the desert cracked beneath the impact. Ash shot upward in an eruption of grey.The wolf dodged, pushing off the dust with enough force to tear deep grooves behind it.It sprang upward, jaws wide, and clamped onto the giant's shoulder.
Flesh tore.Blood sprayed.
The giant howled and seized the wolf, lifting it like a broken rag of fur and bone.Its claws dug deep into the wolf's ribs.Cracks echoed inside its body.
The wolf's vision blurred, but its eyes blazed brighter.
More.
The colossus hurled it across the desert.The wolf slammed into the ash, rolling, skidding, leaving behind a trail that gleamed red even under the moon's cold light.
Its limbs shook.Its chest burned.And yet it rose again with a movement swift and confident.
The white creature lowered its stance, muscles drawing tight.Its breath left the air in heavy waves.
The wolf jumped first.
The two monsters collided in a storm of claws, teeth, bone and blood.Ash exploded under every strike.The sound of tearing flesh and splintering bone echoed across the wasteland like distant thunder.Each movement was raw instinct.Nothing human lived here.Nothing civilized.
The wolf leaped toward the giant's neck.The giant caught it midair and slammed it into the ground again, again, again.Fissures split the desert under the impacts.
The wolf's vision dimmed.Blackness threatened.But hunger carried it forward.
Not yet.Not until the world goes silent.
With a final surge, it twisted free and launched itself upward.Its jaws snapped onto the giant's throat, teeth sinking past fur, past muscle, until bone met resistance.Then that too broke with a crack like a branch snapping under frost.
The blue light in the giant's eyes flickered, dimmed, and died.
Its body collapsed, shaking the ground with its fall.
Silence reclaimed the desert.
The wolf stood over the corpse, trembling, blood dripping from its exposed bones.Its breath came in ragged bursts.Its flanks rose and fell unevenly, carved open by claws and teeth.
But something throbbed inside its body.A pulse.Heavy.Warm.Alive.
A shift.A growth.A new hunger.
The wolf lowered its head to the warm flesh of its fallen enemy.
Eat.Take everything.Become more.
Under the eternal moon, in a world without stars, the wolf began to devour the colossus piece by piece, with no hesitation and no reverence.
****
The ash desert lay silent behind him, its endless grey surface stretching beneath the frozen moon like the corpse of a world that had never truly lived.The wolf stood over the fallen colossus, his breath harsh and uneven, mist rising from his jaws and dissolving into the cold air. Blood seeped slowly from his wounds, trickling down his legs before vanishing into the dust as if the desert were drinking it.
The body of the giant was still warm.
The wolf lowered his head, and the faint glow within the torn chest cavity caught his eye.A soft blue radiance pulsed inside the ruin of bone and flesh, steady and deep, as though some trapped spirit were trying to breathe through crystal.
A core.
The most precious thing a creature could possess in this world of cinders.The crystallized essence of power.The concentrated will to survive, kill and evolve.
He stepped closer.
The light caressed the exposed bone on his muzzle, painting it with a spectral glow. His heart beat harder, responding instinctively to the presence of such raw energy.
He opened his mouth.
His fangs slid around the glowing shard, and the core cracked with a muffled snap.Light flooded his throat, then surged through him like molten metal forced through narrow veins. It raced into his lungs, down his legs, up his spine, clinging to every fiber of his being.
Something opened inside him.
Not a wound.Not a memory.
A sea.
A vast black ocean formed within him, silent and perfectly still, its surface unbroken.Then a single drop fell.A drop of pure blue energy from the devoured core, descending into that void like a star falling into deep water.
The sea trembled.
Ripples spread through the darkness, growing wider, deeper, heavier.His body shook.His chest tightened.The desert blurred around him as if the world could not decide whether to collapse or reshape itself.
Then everything stilled.
The energy settled inside him, expanding the horizon of that inner sea.A deeper hunger rose from its depths.A new weight marked his bones.
And the voice came.
It entered his mind as quietly as a closing eye.
[ Congratulations, black beast. One step closer to transformation. ]
The wolf froze.The sound was familiar.Ancient.Ever-present.
It had always been there, somewhere behind the edge of thought, like a distant song carried by a wind that did not exist.It did not command.It did not coax.It simply witnessed.
And it pushed.
The voice faded, leaving behind an echo that spread like thin frost across his consciousness.
He rose.
His wounds still burned.His ribs still ached.But beneath the torn skin and cracked bone, a new strength pulsed, rising and falling with every heartbeat.Not enough to transform.Not yet.But enough to change the way the world looked at him.Enough to change the way he looked back.
He left the corpse behind.Soon the desert would reclaim it.Nothing stayed long in the memory of this place.
He crossed the plain with slow, deliberate steps, breathing the heavy scent of ash and faint traces of distant predators. Other shapes moved far on the horizon, silhouettes wandering under the cold moonlight.Creatures driven by the same law.Creatures urged forward by the same voice.
A world where evolution was not a choice but a sentence.
Where power was the only language.
The wolf walked for what felt like hours.The moon did not move.The ash shifted only when he stepped on it, as if the rest of the world were frozen in place.
Then the ground changed.
The grey dust brightened.It thickened.It tinted itself with streaks of deep red.
Heat touched his paws.
He stopped at the border of a new desert.
A vast expanse of burning earth stretched before him, the sand shimmering with waves of heat. The air distorted as though alive, breathing in slow contractions. The dunes looked like the spines of giant beasts sleeping beneath the surface.
This place was alive.Ancient.Hostile.
A different kind of hunger waited here.
He stepped forward.
The sand swallowed his paws.A heavy breath of heat rolled across his muzzle.The scent in the air changed, filling his lungs with a metallic taste that signaled danger, promise, blood.
The voice returned, softer this time, almost intimate.
[ Continue, black beast. This world favors those who dare to devour it. ]
He advanced into the shimmering heat, leaving the cold moonlit waste behind him.The air closed around him like a furnace.The dunes shifted in the distance.Something roared far beyond sight.
He did not look back.He did not slow.
In this world, there was only forward.