The air in the Valley of the Unborn didn't just carry the scent of death; it was composed of it.
Every step we took into the concentric circles of ancient wolf skeletons produced a sound like dry parchment tearing. The bones were bleached a brilliant, unnatural white, contrasting sharply with the grey salt-dust that swirled around our ankles like a ground-level fog. These were not the remains of a single battle or a localized plague. These were the discarded skeletons of the First Alpha's own pack—those who had been deemed "imperfect" when he sought to refine the shifter soul into a weapon of pure light.
