In the shifting, blood-lit wilds of the Hunting Grounds, where every shadow breathed and every wind carried the scent of prey, Hircine watched the chase unfold.
A great elk—its antlers like splintered moons, jagged and pale as frostbitten bone—thundered across a valley of black grass that whispered beneath its hooves. Each stride carved silence into the land, each breath a plume of steam against the crimson sky. Behind it came the hunters.
Three.
One moved like a striking wind—swift, precise, closing distance with lethal grace. Another lingered at the edges, circling, watching—cunning, patient, guiding the prey toward its doom without haste. The last did not rush nor scheme. It endured. Step by step, unrelenting, a force that would not tire, would not falter, would claim its prize by inevitability alone.
Hircine's gaze followed them all. His aspect loomed tall among the twisted trees—antlers crowned in shadow, eyes burning with a golden, primal light that saw not flesh, but purpose.
A faint smile touched his lips.
Each hunter had chosen their path. Each prey its test.
No cry was wasted. No death without meaning.
This was balance.
This was truth.
This was the Hunt.
Then the sky tore open.
Not as storm or thunder, not as the wrath of some passing force. No—this was violation. A wound carved into the firmament, jagged and seething, as though reality itself had been flayed apart. Fire bled through it, not the living fire of forge or sun, but a devouring red that consumed even the light around it. Beneath it came something colder—weight, pressure, domination—pressing down upon the Hunting Grounds like an unseen yoke.
The air screamed.
The valley stilled.
The great elk vanished as though it had never drawn breath. The hunters froze mid-stride, their forms unraveling into drifting ash, denied their end, denied their purpose.
And Hircine's smile faded and silence fell.
Three presences descended.
The first came like the end of all things—a cataclysm given shape. Flames licked outward from his form, devouring space, curling hungrily at the edges of existence itself. Each step he took cracked the ground, leaving smoldering ruin in his wake. Mehrunes Dagon had arrived, and with him came the promise that nothing made would remain unbroken.
Beside him followed weight—immense and suffocating. The sound of chains echoed, though none could be seen, their clatter felt not in the ear but in the soul. The air grew thick, heavy with command, with ownership. Molag Bal emerged as if the realm already belonged to him, his presence pressing against all things, demanding submission without a word.
The third did not announce herself with force.
She silently seeped in.
A shifting silhouette where edges blurred and certainty rotted away. The ground darkened beneath her passing, grass curling inward, life recoiling into quiet decay. Namira lingered at the periphery, yet her influence crept everywhere, unseen and inescapable.
The forest shuddered.
The beasts fled into burrows, into shadow, into nothingness if they could find it.
Only Hircine remained.
He did not step back. He did not bow.
He stood as the Hunt itself—unyielding and sovereign.
"You force your way into my realm," Hircine said, his voice low, steady, but beneath it lay a growl that trembled through root and bone alike. "You interrupt the Hunt."
Mehrunes Dagon laughed.
"You call this a hunt?" Dagon said, his voice a blaze that consumed meaning. "A cycle of predator and prey, bound by rules, repeating without end. You cage yourself in tradition, Huntsman. You waste what could be forged from chaos."
Molag Bal stepped forward, and the very air seemed to kneel.
"We come with purpose," he said, each word heavy as iron chains dragged across stone.
Namira's voice followed softly, slipping between them like rot beneath skin.
"And opportunity," she whispered.Hircine's eyes burned brighter with fury.
"You come with arrogance."
Silence answered him.
Even the wind dared not move. Even the distant echoes of the realm held their breath.Then
Molag Bal spoke again.
"We have begun a transformation," he said. "Your beasts… your favored hunters. The ones you gift with fang and fury." His gaze narrowed. "Some have accepted… evolution."
The word lingered.
Hircine's expression darkened, his antlers casting long, jagged shadows that stretched across the broken ground.
"Speak plainly," he said.
Mehrunes Dagon stepped closer, flames surging higher, eager, hungry.
"We have reshaped them," Dagon declared. "We have taken your werewolves and broken their limits. They carry the strength of the beast but now they hunger as vampires do. Endless. Insatiable. No cycle. No restraint. Only destruction."
"And all these, right under your nose, Huntsman."
Hircine's lips curled, into something far more dangerous than a smile.
"Werepires," he said, the word forming like a curse dragged from the depths of the wild.
Namira's eyes seemed to twinkle with delight.
"Yes," she whispered. "Creatures unbound by your precious balance. No prey. No predator.
Only consumption… and the beauty of what remains after."
The ground trembled.
Not from Dagon's fire.
From Hircine.
Cracks split through the black earth, spreading outward as something seemed to stir beneath the surface of the realm itself. The sky dimmed, the blood-red light dulling.
"You corrupt the Hunt," Hircine said, and now the growl was no longer restrained. It rolled outward, a thunder felt in marrow and instinct. "You twist predator into abomination. You deny prey its purpose. You deny hunter its trial."
His gaze locked onto each of them in turn.
"There is no balance in what you have done."
Mehrunes Dagon sneered, flames surging in answer.
"Balance is a lie," he said. "There is only power and those strong enough to seize it.
Molag Bal's voice followed, colder still.
"And those who are owned by it."
Hircine took a single step forward.
Every beast in the Hunting Grounds felt it, felt the call, the rising fury, the ancient law awakening. Claws scraped against earth. Fangs bared in unseen places. The Hunt stirred, restless, ready to answer its master's wrath.
"You have trespassed," Hircine said. "You have defiled my domain. You have twisted my children."
His voice sharpened, each word drawn slow, deliberate, like a blade sliding free from its sheath.
"You will answer for it."
For a moment, just a moment, the realm teetered on the edge of violence. Fire clashed with shadow, domination pressed against instinct, decay coiled against fury. The very fabric of the Hunting Grounds strained, as though one more breath would shatter it into open war.
Then Molag Bal raised his hand.
"Not yet," he said.