Chapter Text
The Empire did not believe in gentle monsters. It catalogued them, weaponized them, dissected them, or executed them. There was no column in the registry for ‚protector‘, no annotation for ‚devoted‘, no classification for ‚loves too much‘. Seryu Ubiquitous had once fit the Empire’s preferred mold perfectly. She had believed in justice so fiercely that it burned away nuance. She had believed monsters wore obvious shapes. Fangs. Claws. Rebellion in their eyes. Then she died. Or rather, she should have.
The mission had collapsed into chaos—literal collapse, in fact. A collapsing stone watchtower, collapsing reinforcements, collapsing certainty. She remembered rubble. Impact. The sound of snapping bones and creaking metal. Then darkness. She did not remember the wolf.