I woke up tasting iron.

Not blood. Not rust. More like the air itself had been chewing on old pennies and decided to share.

I was on dirt that still remembered being pressed against.

A crossroads.

Two paths cutting each other like someone couldn’t pick a direction and got mad about it.

Above me was an oak, ancient and crooked, pointing like it had opinions. Hanging from it was a rope that should have rotted into nothing a long time ago.

It hadn’t.

I didn’t remember being born. I didn’t remember a mother, a pack, a den. I remembered nothing, and yet my body knew what it was. Four paws. A throat built for growls. Teeth built for decisions. Fur the colour of soot dusted silver. Tall, too. Very tall. Like someone had taken a wolf and said, “More. Make it more.”

Then I felt the itch.

Not on my skin. Behind it. Like a leash made of moonlight tugging at the back of my skull. Every sound, every scent, every little movement of the world got filed away the moment it happened, like I wasn’t just seeing it. I was collecting it.

For who, I didn’t know.

I looked down and saw the mark in the mud. A pawprint pressed deep, too clean, too deliberate. Around it, braided rope and briar vine lay like a boundary. Like a warning. Like a promise somebody else had already made on my behalf.

The rope above creaked. The wind held its breath.

And I understood one thing, perfectly, without knowing how I knew it.

This place needed a warden.

So I stood up, and the crossroads watched me back.