Two Battle Reports and Blackpine Central Command's Assessment

Only a wisp of white smoke remained of Crowbone Fief's Sacred Flame Tower. It scattered in the cold wind.

By the Eternal Night Defense Line's past experience, a Fourth-Tier Wolf King should not have led a force of this size into battle during the first half of Blood Moon Season.

High-Tier Demonic Beasts hunted with ruthless practicality. They usually lay low until the middle of the Blood Moon, when the Blood Moon Law's corruption had seeped deep into the Frozen Tundra, lesser beasts had drained the Sacred Flame, and the soldiers of the Eternal Night Defense Line were exhausted. Only then would they lead their legions forward.

Everything happening at Crowbone Fief broke that iron rule.

A closer look at the dark army that had destroyed Crowbone Fief revealed something deeply wrong with it.

The low-tier wolf packs roaming the ruins still had sunken bellies, their ribs plainly visible. Before they could eat enough flesh in the early Blood Moon to build up their strength, they had attacked a well-defended major fief.

The Werewolf leader Ulgan turned beneath the remains of the Sacred Flame. The Blood Moon lit the dark red ridge of bone along his back.

Deep within that ridge, between the gaps in its thick carapace, lay a black-and-red blood seal.

It was no natural marking. It reeked of death, and its intricate, orderly lines resembled a brand left by some dark civilization.

Ulgan stood amid Crowbone Fief's ruins, soaked in bloody mud.

Not far behind him, several blood-maddened Werewolf Vanguard Commanders were still digging through the rubble, trying to smash open a heavy stone slab and slaughter the Crowbone Fief survivors hiding in the cellar.

Their instincts at the start of the Blood Moon were to feed and spread fear. That rule was carved into their flesh.