Chapter One

     There is silence in the thick, heavy air of the summer night. Lack of rain had left humidity high in the village's depths, and crops were due for a nice long shower. The people could use it as well. Now they lay down in well-built homes of brick, stone and wood, protected by someone more silent than those who threaten. If this someone speaks while on duty, they are to be casted out.
     
     Rules are strict here.
     
     The spiritual and occult are very much a part of daily lives here. They pray at an altar protected by one of their own, to a God that resembles them in every way. Perfect. They are wolves, birth with Demonic blood giving them all wolf traits. They hold the ears, the tail, the claws, the abilities of a wolf in their bodies. There are others with traits similar, the animal variation different as more and more breeds are born. And there are some who are not animals at all, but more or less just phantoms caught in the boundary line of real and just legends. We pray to a God that was more or less a wolf who was born first amongst our kind. He set rules and established what creatures we were as time pressed on for his short life. But his memory still burns bright after hundreds of years of these creatures walking.
     
     Wolf Demons, living in their own packs, only keeping close with members of the pack. Very rarely will a Wolf travel out on his own. Women are mostly kept behind to care for the young and breed with males. The men hunt and gather what they can. These are the basic guidelines for Wolf lives. For normal born members. Certain members are put off to the side at birth, sentenced to work with a set of five members to look over the village and set rules and customs to fit the changing of times. 
     
     Of the Wolf pack and these five counsils, is one chosen to protect the pack from outsiders and the unknown. They are set before the altar, recite a prayer that is given to them at birth, and fed one meal daily for their services to sit before the alter and stop what is in their way. When they are not attacking all that threatens, they are to read and memorize each and every legend and fable passed down from generation to generation of wolf. The current "Priest" sitting in the heat of the summer moon, reads silently as he listens for some sound signalling danger.
     
     The Legend of the Snow Phantom
     
     His favorite fable. He should be studying The Legend of Fox Fire, but his eyes constantly return to the first fable he was taught. He knew it well, front to back, each period, comma and hyphen. It was a story about a Demon known as Wynter, who gave birth to a son named Jack Frost, who sent the world into a cold sleep every year for three months. Father Wynter, the Snow Phantom King, had Jack help him in areas of the world that Wynter could not touch, such as the Desert Lands of the Sand People, of which the priest learned about in one of the first few chapters of the legends book. Jack Frost did his job well, until he was sent to spread the icy chill of his abilities to the Wolf Pack of the South. The second that his cold feet touched the Altar, the priest of that time attacked him, not realizing that this being was a God's son. He wounded the vulnerable child's arm, slicing it off in a quick motion. The being howled in pain, summoning with its call, Wynter himself.
     
     Wynter was not pleased with his son's injury.
     
     The priest was punished with death, and the Wolf tribe was punished with more than Wynter's absence. There was no cold to balance out warm days. Wynter made sure those days were actually made hotter. On Wynter's last call to the Wolves, he vowed that a priest must be sacrificed when he reached a certain point in his time. 
     
     The current priest stared at this fable for a long time. His favorite fable was his own demise. A prediction of what his own future held for him, despite his service to the Pack. The priest closed his eyes and contemplated shutting the book. His time was due after 12 full moons. Then Wynter would take him for what early generations had done. He sighed at it, eyes full of sadness. He normally would smile at this tale. But as time pushed further and further on, the reality of what this meant for him, left the priest in a silence of loneliness. 
     
     He looked up at the sky and saw a star he had never laid eyes on before. Bright blue, shining down directly over the temple. His heart heavy, he counted each second that he stared at this star. He wasn't ready to die. He wanted this to only be a fairytale. He closed his eyes and wished for another way for this to be settled between Wynter and the Pack.
     
     Magnus looked down at the book, opened it back up, and proceeded to read his demise again.