The deep union chamber in the Cliffs swallowed sound like it had teeth.

  Monu crouched near the back wall, pressed to the cold stone, half-hidden in shadow. The cavernous room was deep and carved low into the rock, sloping downward like a funnel.

  The smoke from the fire in the center didn’t rise to a single point. It crawled, clinging to the walls until it found cracks to seep through.

  Six elders sat in a tight ring, their armored backs catching faint glimmers from the coals. They looked as immovable as the carvings behind them—spirals etched into stone, faded symbols that once meant unity, before everything cracked.

  No one looked at Monu, but they all knew he was there.

  “We’ve lived untouched for generations,” Rowan said, voice low and even. “That ends now!”

  The angry Pangolin thrusts his claws into the stone floor.

  “A lion walks with the wind again!”

  One of the others shifted her weight as Rowan began to click his nails against the stone.

  Not a nervous habit. A message. A warning.

  “If he commands it,” she said, “then the winds are no longer asleep.”

  Monu didn’t move. Didn’t speak. But something tightened behind his ribs.

  He hadn’t told them everything. Not how the wind had wrapped around his paws. How he felt a call to wind.

  “We should seal the paths,” said an elder near the fire. “The high trails, the outer dens. If the lions rise again—”

  “We don’t run,” Rowan snapped. “We outlast.”

  “Outlast?” another barked. “Outlast what? Another war? One lead by a cub couldn’t track a scent from his nose to his dewclaws?”

  The chamber swelled with heat and smoke. The silence that followed made Monu scan the room. He is used to the elders having an answer for everything.

  The eldest elder hadn’t spoken. She hadn’t moved at all, her body still as packed earth. Then she blinked.

  “If the wind has chosen poorly,” she said, “it won’t take long for ruin to follow.”

  The fire popped like bone breaking.

  Monu’s ears twitched. Something about the way she’d said it. It didn’t sound like a guess. It sounded like memory.

  This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

  And even with fire radiating on his fur, Monu felt cold.

  Monu hadn’t meant to speak. But the words came anyway.

  “Maybe this Severus isn’t what you think.”

  Six heads turned toward him at once. Even the flames seemed to hush.

  “He didn’t strike like a fool,” Monu went on. “He didn’t show off. He tested me, then walked away. He wasn’t trying to destroy anything.”

  A pause.

  “Maybe the wind chose him for a reason.”

  The silence that followed felt different than before. It didn’t settle—it pressed.

  The eldest elder lifted her head fully now, old eyes unreadable in the firelight.

  “Then you must find out,” she said. “Before he convinces others to follow.”

  Another elder made raspy snarl that Monu could smell across the den.

  “The winds have never chosen lightly. But they don’t choose clearly either.”

  “Or fairly,” someone muttered near the edge.

  Monu’s gaze drifted to the carvings behind the fire. spirals chipped and broken by age. Not decorative. Warnings.

  “Do we know how they choose?” he asked. “Or why?”

  A long pause.

  “We don’t,” Rowan admitted will bitterness falling across his face. “Only that when the winds stir, so does the worst in us.”

  The eldest nodded slowly.

  “Something is different now. The spirits are moving… but not like before. The wind follows this Severus, yes. But for how long? And why now?”

  The fire dimmed. The smoke thickened.

  Monu exhaled through his nose.

  They didn’t know. No one did.

  The silence fractured.

  “He shouldn’t have been raised here.”

  The voice came from the youngest of the circle. A lean pangolin with new scars and an edge in his tone that hadn’t been there seasons ago.

  “We’ve never kept lions. Never trained them. And now the winds stir within a year of our care?”

  Monu straightened slightly. His chest burned, but he said nothing. Not yet.

  The young pangolins slowly dropped his nose as he glared at Monu, waiting for a reaction.

  “You think I brought the wind?” Monu asked faintly.

  “You were brought here because your father asked,” another elder said. “We honored that. But maybe… we didn’t understand what we were agreeing to.”

  Monu’s throat tightened.

  “We taught him to read the wind,” Rowan snapped. “We gave him no power and no reason for the wind to change.”

  “Then let him read the wind elsewhere,” the younger one said. “Seal the Cliffs. I don’t want that gray cub to have a reason to come back.”

  A soft and familiar voice to Monu rose above the bickering

  “Enough,”

  It came from Senca, the one who had taught Monu to survive the Cliff while in drought, to read wind currents and trust the dust as it clung to stone.

  “If the wind has chosen, it will not stop for our fear. And if it stirs because of him…”

  She turned to Monu.

  “Then you should go. But not with teeth. With eyes. With silence. As we taught you.”

  “You want me to follow him?” Monu asked.

  “I want you to read this young cub,” she said. “Read the wind. Read the other lions. Read the shift in the pride lands.”

  “We do not stop the wind. But we may understand its direction.”

  Monu walked up to the upper caves.

  Monu crouched near the wall, tail wrapped tight, listening to the wind scratch at the stones outside.

  It had no voice now. Just a rhythm. In and out. In and out.

  He shifted on his paws.

  What if he’s dangerous? Really dangerous?

  Severus didn’t feel strong. Just… cold.

  What if Severus is looking for more power? What if he wants to kill anyone who appraoches?

  What if I follow him… and find out he’s worse than the elders fear?

  What if they don’t let me back in?

  The thought punched harder than the cut on his chest.

  The wind stirred again bring a smell of dry earth. He didn’t look at it.

  You leave, you risk everything. You stay, and elders blame you for existing. Either way—

  You lose.

  A thin scraping sound reverberated behind him.

  Senca didn’t speak. She sat beside him, slow and stiff, like every movement had a cost. Monu didn’t turn.

  “I’m not afraid of him,” he said.

  “Good,” Senca said.

  “I’m afraid of what happens if I go and bring bad news back to the circle.”

  She blinked once.

  “You think we won’t take you in?”

  “I think… maybe I wouldn’t deserve it.”

  Silence again.

  “You’ve tracked wind with your eyes closed,” she said. “You’ve found roots under dry stone. You’ve endured heat for a year most cubs can’t stand for in a morning.”

  She leaned her body forward.

  “We’ve already taken you in. The question is, do you carry us when you leave?”

  Monu didn’t speak.

  “Fear is a strong wind that leads astray,” she whispered. “Flee it, and you walk with the lost. Endure it, and your way becomes clear.”

  “If this lion cub is to be feared. We must ask the wind how to act.”

  Then Senca stood and left.

  Monu sat in the stillness, breathing in dust and doubt.

  Then, slowly, he stood. He felt a sense of calm.

  The memory popped in his again, the way the wind had reached for his paw when Severus appeared. Not wild. Not random.

  It had tried to grap his paw.

  “The wind is moving,” he whispered. “So shall I.”