The Unborn Child: Is The Future Set In Stone?

Echoes of the Watchers

~*~

Flashback in the castle…

There is a loud commotion outside the castle. Cling! Bang! The guards clash with an unwelcome intruder, battling to keep them from breaching the castle gates. Under the eerie glow of the blood moon, a lone shapeshifter warrior battles fiercely against the guards at the castle gates. General Luther and his guards, swords ringing against this lone shapeshifter, shift between forms with eerie fluidity. But this is more than a battle— It is a reckoning.

Inside the castle, Queen Baether endures her own struggle, bringing forth the heir to the Orenda Kingdom. But as fate tightens its grip, the night is about to take a turn that no one could have foreseen, or someone did…

~ Outside the castle gate ~

“ HE MUST NOT ENTER THE CASTLE! DO YOU UNDERSTAND MEN?!” Luther shouted to his guards

“YES, SIR!” guards shouted in return

"IDENTIFY YOURSELF! If you dare move one inch closer, you'll regret it!" Luther shouted

“I AM RAID, THE BROTHER OF THE KING, and YOU WILL DIE HERE!” Raid shouted

~

With a smirk on his face

~

The mystery man named Raid had left Luther and the guards on edge. For a few moments under the blood moonlight, it began to rain down under the blood moon’s haunting glow. The lone warrior started to shed their human guise, limbs twisting, bones lengthening, until a monstrous form—larger than any recorded werewolf—stands before the castle gates. General Luther and his guards steel themselves, blades raised, but this is no ordinary battle. This is an encounter with something long thought extinct. For centuries, history whispered that these creatures were mere relics of a forgotten age. But history has been known to lie… or perhaps, it simply wasn’t meant to remember. The guards were beyond shocked, and it showed on not only their faces but on Luther as well. They froze where they stood. Not in preparation, not in defiance—no, something far worse. Terror had gripped their bodies so completely that they could no longer command them. Their swords lay limp in their hands, their breath trapped in their chests, as the shapeshifter loomed over them—an impossible god of muscle and fur, its many forms now converged into one monstrous being. It did not fight. It eradicated. A force beyond time, beyond legend, beyond mercy. And in the blood-soaked shadow of the moon, it accepted their fear as it accepted their deaths—inevitable, absolute, complete.

With slow, deliberate steps, the great god-like werewolf advanced, passing through the ruined remnants of the castle’s defenders. The scent of blood clung to the air, yet it showed no signs of urgency. This was no conquest—it was a claiming. The castle doors creaked under its weight as it pressed forward, entering the sacred halls where history was being rewritten in blood and birth. It did not come to conquer. It did not come to raze the kingdom to ruin.

It came for a conversation.

And he came to collect the child.

With a hidden plan unraveling beneath the castle’s foundations, Raid stepped inside, his presence a quiet storm against the ancient stone walls. A smirk tugged at his lips as he moved through familiar corridors, the ghosts of his childhood lingering in each chamber and secret passage.

"I wonder if my little brother misses me." he mused, amusement curling around the thought like a blade wrapped in silk.

The castle had changed, but not enough to erase his memory of it. Each corner, each doorway, remained etched in his mind, as if time itself had kept the kingdom frozen for his return. As he wandered, he paused—eyes narrowing, senses sharpening.

Three scents.

One carried the weight of blood and authority—his brother. Another, delicate yet fierce—the queen. But the third… Elusive, slipping beyond Orenda’s borders. A mistake. Letting them vanish into the unknown. Even he, for all his instincts, had yet to grasp the gravity of what he had lost and so, unaware of the unraveling fate ahead, he continued his search—for his brother.

A slow, knowing grin crept across his face. He dismissed the fleeing woman and shifted his focus. His brother’s scent had settled within a nearby chamber. That would be where his queen resided. That would be where the heir should be, so he thought. With unhurried steps, he reached the heavy wooden doors and pushed them open, his smirk widening as his gaze landed on the faces within the room.

~

"Well… Well… Well."

~

With fear on his face and the atmosphere in the room turning cold..

“Why are you here, plea-” said Queen Baether

~

With a pause.

~

“Shh, Where IS the child?” said Raid

“ You will never find her!” said King Brakun

“I may not find the child. But I will find the guardian that you sent with her. You look shocked, brother.” said Raid

“You are NOT MY BROTHER!” said King Brakun

~

With anger in his voice.

~

“Now, don’t be like that. I will tell you my plans before I kill you both. How does that sound?” said Raid

“My love, I do not want to die in his hands.”

“As you wish, my love.” said King Brakun

“What are you-” said Raid

Before Raid could speak, the air turned sharp—cold enough to steal breath, cold enough to mark the end of something irreversible. King Brakun’s fingers tightened around his wife’s hand, sensing the dread coiling in the silence.

Then Queen Baether moved. The spell surged—a force not of destruction but of erasure. It enveloped them both, spiraling outward, threading into time itself. A curse of forgetting, freezing their past into a place where their child had never existed, a truth lost until the heir of Orenda could restore it. Raid lunged forward—but too late. The world blurred. They were slipping away. With a split second to act, his voice tore through the void—raw, wrathful, unshaken.

“REMEMBER THIS—SHE CAN’T HIDE FROM ME FOREVER!” shouted Raid

His words cracked through time, an echo that refused to die.

~

Complete silence in the chamber.

~

As Raid fled the chambers as the world collapsed behind him—stone splintering into dust, walls unraveling into nothingness, the curse devouring the kingdom in eerie silence. He barely tore himself free, teleporting beyond its reach before it could claim him.

But there was no time to linger. The hunt had begun. His gaze locked onto the guardian—a wolf, relentless, charging through the void with the child cradled in its grasp. Every sinew in Raid coiled for the strike. He was close, so close—

Until the ground split apart, and reality itself convulsed. The unseen force wrenched them from the battlefield, dragging them across worlds.

And then, the child moved.

Small hands ignited with furious light, a force too wild to be restrained. The air trembled—raw energy bending space itself—a blast that didn’t just hurl Raid away, but tore through the portal’s edge like a rupture in fate. It was an exile wrapped in defiance, a declaration written in fire. Safety or oblivion—the child had chosen. And Raid, sent hurtling into the abyss, knew only one thing.

The hunt was not over…

Now The Journey Begins...