‘Why is it following us?’ Mal asked, her voice low, almost reverent.
Thanatos turned to study the white wolf, his expression unreadable, carved from stillness.
‘Very curious,’ he murmured.
‘What is?’
‘Well...’ He folded his arms. ‘When a wolverian dies, their spirit is said to be reborn in the body of a wolf. The giant wolves never truly pass on. They carry within them the souls of ancient wolverian warriors.’
‘Then how is there one watching us now?’ Mal asked, her brow furrowing.
‘I don’t believe that’s a true giant wolf,’ he replied softly.
Her frown deepened. ‘Then what is it?’
‘A soul,’ Thanatos said, glancing down at her. Something in his expression softened, almost tender. ‘The soul of a wolverian whose body still breathes in the mortal realm, but whose spirit is no longer bound to it.’
‘How is that even possible?’
‘I’ve seen it before,’ he said, turning back towards the gates.
Makaria stepped closer, her mismatched eyes wide as they locked on the ghostly creature.
‘It happens to wolverians who become valkyrians,’ she said gently. ‘Their bodies remain behind, but not all of them crosses over. A part of their soul stays tethered to the flesh, but the rest...’ Her voice faltered. ‘The rest is drawn here. Lost forever.’
Mal said nothing. She took a step forward, then another, her boots crunching softly against the earth until she was standing before the wolf.
It didn’t move. It simply watched her.
Slowly, she dropped to her knees, not from fear, never that, but from something deeper. A grief that lived in the marrow of her bones. A mourning she had never allowed to surface.
With a hesitant hand, she reached out and rested her palm against the wolf’s side. Its fur was cold and impossibly soft beneath her fingers. When those pale blue eyes met hers, she felt her breath leave her.
She knew.
‘Wren,’ she breathed, her voice breaking like glass.
The wolf let out a soft, almost sorrowful whimper and lowered its head, pressing close as Mal wrapped her arms around it. She buried her face in the thick fur, her body trembling as her heart splintered all over again.
There was no denying it.
This was Wren or some part of her, fractured and wandering, caught between life and death, between memory and myth.
‘Will you come with me?’ Mal whispered, her cheek still pressed to the wolf’s side. ‘Will you help me find Allegra?’
The wolf pulled away, slow and graceful, and padded forward, heading towards the gate. It paused only once, to look back at her, then sat before the entrance, waiting.
Mal rose and followed, a small, aching smile tugging at her lips.
‘If wolverians inhabit wolves when they die,’ Mal said quietly, ‘does that mean they never come to the Underworld?’
‘They do,’ Thanatos replied, just as the great gates groaned open on rusted hinges, revealing the figure standing beyond. ‘Once the wolf that carries their soul dies, the spirit is released and it finds its way here.’
Mal said nothing, though her purple eyes drifted to the figure framed in the threshold. Each time she looked upon Zagreus, she was struck anew by the uncanny resemblance he bore to Hades.
He was tall and lithe, his strength coiled beneath alabaster skin. His dark hair was cut close, and powerful black horns curved from his temples, giving him the imposing silhouette of a wyverian god, and yet there was something unmistakably otherworldly about him. Something far more ancient.
It was the eyes, perhaps. One black as the void between stars, the other a vivid red that burnt like coals.
