Evaline:


    The first page that greeted me wasn''t filled with words.


    It held a symbol.


    I inhaled softly, my fingers hovering over the parchment before finally touching it.


    The emblem was etched in silver ink that hadn''t dulled even after centuries. At its center stood a silver wolf... not snarling, not aggressive... but regal. Its head was lifted toward a crescent moon that hovered just above its brow, as if the moon itself had chosen the wolf as its guardian. The wolf''s eyes were iid with faint lines of pale blue, subtle yet luminous, giving the impression that they watched through the page rather than from it.


    Around the wolf, thin intertwining vines of silver wrapped in a circle, their leaves shaped like tiny crescents. They weren''t decorative in a fragile way... they looked protective, almost binding, like a seal meant to keep something sacred contained. The outermost ring was etched with runes so fine I almost missed them, each one humming faintly beneath my fingertips.


    Power.


    That was the only word that came to mind.


    This wasn''t just a pack emblem.


    This was a im.


    I had never seen it before. Not in the academy. Not in council records. Not even in the Thorne archives. And yet, the moment my fingers brushed over it, my chest tightened with a sense of recognition so deep it startled me.


    As if some part of me had been waiting to see this.


    I traced the wolf''s outline slowly, reverently, before finally turning the old page.


    The parchment was thick and yellowed with age, but the ink was astonishingly well preserved.


    The second page held only two things.


    A date... from five centuries ago.


    And a name.


    Aurelion Vale


    Second Healer of the Silver Wolf Bloodline


    I turned the page again.


    The third page was filled with neat, nted handwriting written in deep ck ink, slightly faded at the edges but still perfectly legible. As my eyes skimmed the first few lines, my breath caught.


    Aurelion Vale wrote of his birth.


    He was born wolfless.


    He described how, from the moment it was discovered that he had no wolf, the whispers began. How the elders watched him with disappointment thinly veiled as pity. How other children avoided him, mocked him, treated him like a bad omen.


    He wrote of growing up smaller, weaker, always behind.


    Always less.


    I swallowed, my fingers tightening slightly on the edge of the page as memories of my own past resurfaced.


    Aurelion described how everything changed a little after his eighteenth birthday... how one night, when a pack warrior had been gravely injured during patrol, he had touched the man without thinking, without intention… and watched torn flesh knit back together under his trembling hands.


    His healing power had awakened.


    He wrote of his shock. His parents'' disbelief. The fear that had seized him when the elders and the Alpha summoned him immediately.


    But instead of questions… they looked at him as if he was someone they had been waiting for their entire lives.


    That was the night he learned he''s not the only one with such a power. That this had happened before.


    Three decades earlier.


    I leaned closer to the book as the handwriting grew slightly more hurried.


    Three decades ago, there had been another wolfless child named Caelum. And he had been only seventeen when he tried to end his life.


    He had spent nearly two years in relentless cruelty... bullied, beaten, mocked, treated as something broken by both peers and adults alike. The pack had seen him as an embarrassment, a reminder of weakness they didn''t want to acknowledge.


    One night, broken beyond endurance, Caelum had gone to the Moon Goddess'' temple. He nned to kill himself in the Goddess'' temple, but before he could seed, a woman appeared.


    Aurelion described her with words that felt almost reverent even on the page.


    She had hair like liquid silver, cascading down her back as if woven from moonlight itself. Her skin glowed softly, not blinding, but warm... like the gentle light of a full moon on snow. Her eyes were pale blue, endless, holding sorrow and kindness in equal measure.


    She asked him why.


    Why he was giving away the life bestowed upon him.


    And Caelum... raw, broken, hopeless... had told her everything. The bullying. The istion. The feeling of being unwanted by his own pack.


    The woman listened. And when he finished, she asked him what it would take to convince him to keep living.


    Caelum''s answer was simple.


    He said he would only live if the Moon Goddess gave him something that would make him the most respected person in the entire pack.


    Something that would make no one ever look down on him again.


    The woman smiled.


    And promised him that his wish woulde true shortly after his eighteenth birthday... which was two months away.


    Then she vanished.


    And Caelum waited.


    His birthday came and went.


    Nothing changed.


    Months passed.


    The whispers returned, louder than before. Mockery sharper because now theyughed at his foolish hope.


    He believed he had been deceived.


    But then one afternoon his younger sister got badly injured, bleeding heavily. Caelum rushed to her side, desperate to stop her bleeding with nothing but his hands.


    That was when it happened.


    Healing power poured from him like moonlight breaking through clouds - the wound closed and the bleeding stopped.


    That day, the first ever healer of the Silver Wolf Pack was born.


    And Caelum became exactly what he had asked for... the most respected person in the pack.


    And that''s when people started talking about how the woman in the temple had been the Moon Goddess herself. That Caelum had been personally blessed with divine power as there was nothing he couldn''t heal.


    Wounds. Poisons. Curses. Even witches, the book stated inly, couldn''t match the purity or strength of his silver healing.


    I had to pause.


    My chest felt tight.


    My throat burned.


    Because every word felt… ufortably familiar.


    The book went on.


    The pack wondered if Caelum''s children would inherit the power. If this divine blessing would pass down through blood.


    But as decades passed, none of his three children awakened healing powers after their eighteenth birthdays.


    They all had wolves.


    But no healing.


    Slowly, people began to believe it had been a one-time miracle.


    When Caelum died in his forties during a rogue attack, the entire pack mourned.


    And the miracle seemed to end with him.


    Until three decadester.


    Aurelion wrote of his own awakening with a mixture of disbelief and awe. He had no rtion to Caelum. No shared blood. Nothing.


    Yet he, too, had been born wolfless.


    And of all the wolfless children born in those three decades only one had awakened the divine silver healing.


    Him.


    I slowly leaned back against my pillow, the weight of the book pressing heavily against my legs.


    Only one.


    It wasn''t inherited. But it also didn''t seen random. Rather...


    It''s Chosen.


    My heartbeat thundered in my ears.


    Because suddenly, this wasn''t just history.


    It was a mirror.


    Wolfless.


    Bullied.


    Awakened after eighteen.


    Silver healing.


    My fingers trembled slightly as I turned the page, anticipation and anxiety twisting together in my stomach.