Fifteen years had passed since Patriarch Van had picked up a frail silver-haired orphan in the depths of a hostile forest... Time and the harshness of Arcadia had forged the child’s body, transforming his initial fragility into an athletic build. Within the tribe, he was now called Sulyvhan.

Sulyvhan was not a Lycan by blood, and this showed in every movement... Although he had grown up surrounded by furry colossi, he had retained human characteristics. His silver hair framed a gaze that unsettled even the bravest warriors: sclerae of absolute black where silver pupils shone.

Lacking claws since he was not a beast-man, Sulyvhan had adopted mastery of the sword. However, despite his undeniable talent, he hit an invisible wall... Without the superhuman physical constitution of the beast-men or their innate ability to saturate their muscles with raw aura, he could only achieve half of his martial potential.

The full moon evening arrived, marking the solstice and, above all, the coming-of-age ceremony for the fifteen-year-olds. The Lycan village, nestled in a rocky basin protected by millennial trees, vibrated with an electric energy.

Patriarch Van, whose gray fur testified to his experience, stood at the top of the stone altar. The crescent moon on his forehead shone with a silver glow as he observed the aligned candidates. Sulyvhan stood in the center of the row, his sword firmly gripped in his right hand, knuckles whitened by tension.

"Sulyvhan, approach..." ordered Van, his voice a deep rumble that silenced the crowd’s murmurs.

The young man stepped forward. He felt the gazes weighing on him. He stopped at the center of the ritual circle, where the moonlight fell with the greatest intensity.

"You have lived among us as a son," began Van, placing a massive hand on Sulyvhan’s shoulder. "Today comes the hour of your passage to adulthood."

"I am ready, Patriarch," replied Sulyvhan, his voice calm despite the inner turmoil.

The Lycans then began their ancestral prayer. It was a guttural chant, a series of rhythmic barks and howls that seemed to make the earth itself vibrate. As the warriors invoked the essence of their astral divinity, the air around Sulyvhan began to distort.

Night reigned over the Lycans’ domain, when an energy, so dense it seemed solid, erupted from Sulyvhan’s body and completely enveloped the young man. This energy had nothing natural about it.

Under the effect of this irradiation, the silver energy began to overflow from Sulyvhan’s body, saturating the atmosphere with a pressure so heavy that the young Lycans beside him had to step back several paces, their ears flattened against their skulls by a primal survival instinct. Their muffled growls betrayed their unease in the face of this power they did not understand.

"What kind of sorcery is this?" murmured one of them, his yellow eyes shining with worry in the darkness.

Patriarch Van widened his eyes, his jaw tightening under the effect of astonishment. He had never seen such resonance in a human, nor even in any of his own.

The energy surrounding Sulyvhan grew increasingly intense as time passed, which stirred the surrounding wind.

Suddenly, a mass of silver energy enveloped the sword that Sulyvhan held in his right hand. The density of this aura became so considerable that the young man was forced to swing his weapon forward, as if ridding himself of a burden too heavy for his trembling arms. A beam of silver energy, in the shape of a crescent moon, then shot from the tip of the blade with unheard-of violence.

The whistle that followed was so high-pitched that it tore through the silence of the night, forcing several Lycans to clap their hands over their sensitive ears. The beam crossed the esplanade with a speed beyond comprehension, leaving in its wake a luminous trail that persisted for a few seconds like a scar in the darkness.

Fifty meters away, a row of century-old trees, whose trunks were wider than houses, was struck head-on by this energy discharge. For a second, nothing seemed to happen, as if time itself had suspended its course. Then, in a sharp and simultaneous crack, the tops of seven trees slid slowly to the side.

The cut was so clean, so smooth, that the wood looked as if it had been polished by a meticulous craftsman. Not a single fiber protruded, not a single piece of bark was torn. The massive trunks crashed to the ground with a deafening roar, raising clouds of dust and snow that momentarily obscured the view of all the spectators on stage.

A deafening silence fell over the Pack, a silence far heavier than the noise of the falling trees. All, from elite warriors to simple villagers, remained petrified by what they had just witnessed. Their gazes oscillated between the perfectly cut stumps and this young human who was panting in the center of the circle, his sword still smoking with a residual aura that slowly faded into the night air.

"By the ancestors..." breathed an old Lycan woman, her voice laden with reverential fear.

Van slowly approached the boy, his claws slightly extended by defensive reflex, although he strove to control his apprehension. He observed Sulyvhan as if seeing him for the first time, scrutinizing every detail of his sweat-drenched face, his haggard eyes that seemed not to understand what had just happened to him.

"Tell me, Sulyvhan," articulated Van in a deep voice that vibrated with contained emotion, "do you have any idea what you have just accomplished?"

The young man raised an exhausted gaze toward him, his chest still heaving from the effort. "I... I don’t know, Patriarch. I only felt a heat rising within me, and then... everything happened so fast."

The members of the pack began to whisper among themselves, their conversations punctuated by furtive glances toward the young human. Some wore fearful expressions, others a poorly concealed curiosity, but all shared the same observation: this boy was not a simple human, and this night, he had forever disrupted their understanding of the world.