Tearing the lamb-hide, the empyrean Luna reveals the undying terror when the silvery zenith is claimed.
Stands a towering, feral giant—reveling in its bloodthirsty nature till Aurora claims the dawn. — The Ballad of Gévaudan
In the burning ashes of several night pyres throughout the globe, sleeps a vicious beast—only to be invoked by those who believe its origin to be mere fiction—a source of entertainment, a made-up bedtime story to scare stubborn children into bed early.
Ignorant of its existence, they summon the beast in the raging leap of flames, to sing the tales of its insatiable hunger for human flesh that only ignites under the silvery zenith of a full moon night, where it sheds its lamb hide to transform into a towering, feral giant—reveling in its true, bloodthirsty nature. The foolish reiterate the nightmare that had once terrorized the histories of Benais, Auvergne, and Vivarais—a beast who defines the demonic possession and immolation of Gilles Garnier and Peter Stumpp.
Known by many names, it haunts the pages of fiction and flickers across the silver screen. But, in the pages of history, it is famously known as the Beast of Gévaudan—the mysterious, man-eating terror.
Resembling that nightmare, Karan looked at the nine-foot slab of obsidian muscle lunging toward him, its claws—razor-sharp arcs of blackened bone—aimed at his throat. It was swift... But not to a level where Karan's crimson eyes couldn't track it.
With a subtle movement, Karan shifted his body to dodge the deadly daggers that ripped through the air like melted butter, making a lashing sound that echoed fiercely throughout the den. Within a heartbeat, the beast turned around, ready to strike again.
But this time, Karan was prepared for a counterattack. His lead foot carved a line into the stone, and his right fist, covered in a tethering blackish-purple shroud, coiled like a hydraulic spring under tension.
BOOM—!!
His punch erupted with the force of a thunderous clap, challenging the foundations of the underground lair, a maelstrom of pulverized stone and dust rising in its wake.
The connection was solid, unyielding—like striking a wall of steel. Karan's hand throbbed with the dull resonance of the blow.
Grrr...
The low growl cut through the settling dust, revealed not by the halogen lamps, but by the fierce, predatory glow of the beast's eyes—a harbinger of its undiminished wrath.
Drip— Drip—
Something warm and viscous splattered onto Karan's hand. Furrowing his brows, Karan observed the substance—saliva and blood—the beast's, or perhaps the remnants of its last meal.
Looking up, he met the beast's furious gaze, the viscous fluid trailing from its serrated maw. The Vargr stood unyielding. A punch that would have collapsed a structural pillar had done nothing but invite its wrath.
Roar!
The beast unleashed a sound that wasn't a cry, but a physical hammer. The atmospheric pressure in the cavern spiked.
"...Fuck me," Karan let out a curse as he looked at this unfavorable situation.
The Vargr's deadly daggers tore through the air—crashing down at Karan with the weight of a falling boulder.
Boom!!
The impact sent Karan hurtling through the dark. His back slammed against the cold stone wall with a sickening thud, spider-webbing the rock behind him, a fresh cloud of debris marking the collision.
He emerged from the rubble with three jagged lacerations across his chest, his shirt dyed in crimson, hanging in tatters. Wasting no time checking the wounds, he lunged from the debris, his foot aimed at its snarling face.
But exceeding Karan's expectations, the beast was a blur of prehistoric reflex, swiftly catching Karan's leg in its vise-like grip. Its claws tightened with bone-crushing intent—clenching with enough pressure to crush Karan's leg bone and marrow into a pulp.
Grr...?
Only for its efforts to be proven useless. The beast's confusion was palpable—its eyes widened. The man's leg didn't snap. It didn't even bend.
Seizing the moment of confusion, Karan launched himself upward with his free foot, twisting his torso in mid-air. He delivered a roundhouse kick to the beast's temple that sounded like a sledgehammer hitting a wet oak tree. Bam! The Vargr staggered, releasing its grip.
Karan hit the ground but didn't stop. Before the beast could recover, he unleashed a tempest of motion and force—a flurry of strikes that blurred into a singular, crushing rhythm.
With each punch, the blackish-purple shroud wreathed his fists intensely, a viscous heat that seemed to consume the light around him. Within this dark veil, reddish-orange embers drifted erratically, dancing around his tightly locked knuckles.
Yet, except for a foul burning stench, the Vargr's hide remained impervious, an armor of thick bristles and hardened dermis—forcing Karan to pause his flurry and think, his eyes narrowing.
Even immortal nightmares have a tether. While it is true that this beast only let go of its lamb skin under the watchful gaze of a full moon, the folklores sing of the holy substance that could induce eternal slumber to the Vargr—Silver, the only metal inhabiting the sacred glow of the moon.
To further fortify the said knowledge, Pourrat claimed that hunter Jean Chastel, the liberator of Gévaudan, melted down blessed medals of the Virgin Mary to forge the bullets that destroyed the moon-cursed creature.
'And how the hell am I supposed to get so-called blessed medals in a death-sickening den like this?'
Dodging a vicious slash aimed at his face, "Fuck it. If there is no way out, I shall pave one!" Shadows coalesced in Karan's palm, hardening into a tangible, obsidian blade. Its edge glinted dangerously under the silvery glow of the moon, a faint purplish smoke bleeding from the blade's body.
SLASH!
The blade cut through the air, a silver arc against the absolute dark.
Graawrrr!
The Vargr snarled, blood dripping from a shallow wound on the arm it had raised to guard its vitals. Karan noted the shift instantly. 'Too shallow,' he thought as he looked at the injury the Lycan sustained. 'But—' there was something unusual about the Lycan's action just now, a telling move that did not escape Karan's notice. "Interesting..."
Instead of taking the hit head-on like it did with Karan's punches that were majorly aimed at its massive chest, this time it blocked. The beast is protecting its stomach. 'Could it be…'
Aaaauuuuu–!!
Before Karan could come to a conclusion, the Vargr howled, lunging once more, its instincts screaming of the threat Karan posed.
Klang! Klang!
Karan continued his thoughts as high-pitched, sonorous clangs resonated throughout the devil's den.
The battle became an orchestra of violence, a symphony of high-pitched ringing, shredding the lifeless bodies of the cultists like paper, leaving the mangled corpses in a state beyond recognition.
Karan's shadowy blade clashed against the Lycan's long, razor-sharp claws, tough as any high-tensile metal, in a cascade of sparks that looked like stars being born in the gloom. The fight was a blur of motion—a dance of death, a whirlwind of masterfully precise attacks and parries. Karan fought with a ferocity that matched the beast. 'Only one way to find out.'
Amidst the absolute frenzy of their clash, Karan's eyes narrowed, searching for a lapse in the beast's defenses. His every movement was a testament to his unparalleled weapon mastery, precise and swift, leaving no room for error.
Klang!
Another clash echoed, the Lycan's claws meeting Karan's blade. But this time, Karan shifted his stance as his blade met the death sentence sent for him straight from the seven hells. Leaning inward, he tilted his weapon in a precise manner, interfering with the Vargr's center of gravity, unbalancing the nine-foot giant and exposing its underbelly.
SWING!
Seizing the microsecond moment, Karan quickly withdrew his sword, falling into a tightly coiled stance. The blackish-purple shroud intensified around the blade as the reddish-orange embers vibrated erratically. Following a fluid thrust, Karan's sword plunged into the soft, unshielded flesh of the stomach. The Lycanthrope let out a thunderous ROOAAR!! as warm, red blood gushed forth, staining the pitch-black sword crimson. The blade seemed to drink deep of the vitae.
Swish!
With a fluid motion, Karan withdrew the shadowy obsidian, flinging the bloody gore to the floor. The Vargr recoiled, its free hand desperately clutching its gaping gut. Grrr... Hatred burned in its bloodshot eyes, but fear mingled with it. Refusing to fall, it lunged with its remaining arm, slashing frantically to keep Karan at bay.
But the strikes had lost their prehistoric blur; they were slow, lethargic, the beast's breathing uneven and ragged as its body turned to lead. Karan evaded the sluggish arcs effortlessly, a phantom dodging a dying animal. Finding no way to defeat its enemy, the Vargr made a desperate leap, propelling itself using its muscular hind legs toward the jagged cavity in the ceiling—seeking the ruins of the church above.
"Planning to escape? Not so fast," Karan muttered.
He followed, leaping from the graveyard dirt into the moonlight. In mid-air, his pitch blade vibrated intensely, morphing into a longbow. The surrounding shadows leaped to his command, forming a barbed arrow drenched in the blackish-purple shroud as strange, reddish veins ran through its edge—giving all of his 8% unlocked output. He nocked the arrow to the string, drawing it taut to his ear, and released it with the deadly precision of a hawk.
SWISH—
The arrow whistled through the murky air. The strike was true, stabbing into the Vargr's solid back muscles—piercing through its heart from behind, the barbed head peeking out of its chest.
Aauuuu—
With a pained whimper, the beast collapsed onto the church's rotted floorboards. Karan landed gracefully amidst the ruins, his gaze fixed on the injured beast as it dragged itself toward a nave bench.
Haah— Haah—
Turning around, the Lycan supported its back on the rotting wood, looking toward its incoming nemesis, gasping heavily for breath.
"It's time for you to return to where you came from," Karan declared, his voice cold as the moon's light, his gaze merciless and unforgiving. He approached the wounded creature, adjusting his torn attire, fixing his shredded shirt's collar. Each measured step struck the stone with the heavy, unyielding toll of an iron bell, signaling the beast's impending demise.
The bow in his hands morphed back into a blade—a dark harbinger of the end. Karan was ready to send this pitiful, lost soul back to its herder, who would guide it to its origin, rescuing it from its monstrous form.
Grrr….
The Lycan growled weakly, making a last attempt to flee from the inevitable reaper approaching to harvest its soul. It was too early for its demise. Like any creature born in this realm, this newborn pup also wished to live. It also feared death. And so, it made its final struggle to survive—signing a pact with the devil.
Voom— Voom—
A strange, purplish aura started hissing from its body. With a desperate act, it tore the arrow from its chest and clawed at the wound, blood flowing freely as a result of its act of self-mutilation.
AAAUUUU—!
The howl pierced the night, a cacophony of rage and pain. The aura leaking from its body flared wildly as it tore through its own flesh, revealing the cage of ribs that housed its furiously beating, punctured heart.
Shoom—
A blinding purple light, similar to the Lycan's frantically raging aura, burst forth from the cathedral's ravaged floor—the ritual circle lighting in an ominous glow from the cave below.
'Just what is this strange aura?' Karan halted in his tracks, perplexed, his eyes fixed on the spectacle before him. The shroud around his blade writhed in a strange motion, reacting to the ominous energy like a starving beast hungrily eyeing the prey before it, unable to contain its excitement.
Fueled by the ritual ceremony, the Vargr's body started to writhe and expand grotesquely, bones snapping and reforming with wet snaps and crisp crunches. The hole it had opened in its chest slowly sealed itself, concealing a newly morphed, giant, pulsating heart.
Similar to an arachnid molting from its former shell, the beast drove its massive claws directly into its own jaw. With a sickening CRACK, it violently ripped its snout and face apart to make way for the horror growing beneath. Thick, dark blood gushed from the ruined maw like a profane chalice overflowing with crimson, spilling in heavy, suffocating torrents down its chest and pooling on the cathedral floor. The old pelt tore away like a rotting jumpsuit, flesh and muscle sloughing off in wet, agonizing tears as the gleipnir finally failed its ancient duty.
The new beast began to swell, its mass defying the laws of biology as it pushed out of its own blood-soaked corpse until it sat within the ruins like an unmovable mountain of shadow.
From its back, three massive tails erupted, lashing the rubble into dust with every twitch. Its fur was no longer hair; it was a cloak of the abyss, a void that drank the moonlight and left the church in a state of eternal eclipse.
As if already swallowed by Hati after a long and relentless chase, the moon vanished from the sky. And Sköll seemed to be on his way to swallow the sun to mark the awakening of the beast of Ragnarok.
Then, the forehead split. A third eye—horizontal and sickly yellow—opened with a wet, heavy spat, revealing the sight of a true monstrosity. Its eyes were bloodshot and devoid of reason, its sanity lost to the sickening transformation and the sole instinct of survival.
GRRRRR!
Its growl was a low rumble that shook the very stones of the church. It stood on massive limbs, no longer a bipedal Lycan but a colossal behemoth of legend.
"Are you a Pokemon or something? Evolving in the middle of a battle... that's cheating, you know," Karan complained at this déjà vu sight before him as if he were wronged. His tone was flat and unimpressed.
ROAR!
With a ferocious roar, the behemoth stampeded toward Karan. The cathedral trembled—the hollow ground stressing beneath its tons of muscle. Pews were tossed aside like toys in the wake of its fury. Thump! Thump! Contrary to its gigantic body, it marched with the speed of a gale, raising a massive paw up high to crush the life out of the reaper threatening its existence.
Boom!
Crushing Karan underneath, the earth cratered under the sheer force. Dust clouds billowed like a violent storm as the Vargr rained down blow after blow, relentless in its rage. The kinetic energy proving too much for the already weakened ground. With an earsplitting CRACK, the cathedral floor completely gave way, plunging them both back down into the depths of the underground ritual cave amidst an avalanche of shattered stone.
After a moment of fury—ROAR—it lunged with open jaws, aiming to completely erase Karan's existence.
But all it did was try… try its hardest…
The bite never came. The wolf was unable to close its massive jaws and found them stuck—unable to even retract them back, its eyes widening in bewilderment.
"Why so surprised? It's only right for the other party to cheat as well when their opponent is playing dirty."
The dust started to clear, revealing the visage of a man on one knee, his shirt gone, pants in tatters, exposing his toned, muscular physique. Both his hands held onto the wolf's giant canines firmly, locking the maw open. Shadows sizzled with the dense blackish-purple shroud surrounding his frame, writhing around him, erupting from the ground, dancing crazily to a symphony of death.
A swarm of bright reddish-orange embers accompanied the shadows in their ballet, coiling around his form.
Sensing the danger, the Vargr struggled, its claws scratching and scraping the stone floor in a frenzied manner, trying to distance itself from the upcoming disaster.
Standing up from the floor while maintaining his firm grip around the giant's intimidating canines, "HAAAHH!"
Straightening his arched back, his big and robust bicep muscles contracted with the force of a landslide. He lifted the gigantic wolf off the ground, raising it overhead, before spinning the over-tens-of-tons-heavy beast a few times like a ragdoll and tossing it toward the fragile structure of the cathedral.
Boom! It shattered the stone upon impact, sent flying up and out into the night.
Aauuu—
The wolf's whimper echoed through the desolate terrain, its massive body skidding across the rugged earth outside until it hit a boulder, leaving a trail of destruction in its wake.
Inside the cavern, Karan stood amidst the settling dust.
"Project-01, Protocol 26," he intoned, his voice cutting through the dark.
'Protocol 26… Voice pattern matched… User Karan, verified…' A mechanical voice, devoid of emotion, echoed in his head.
"Disengage the Primary Limiter," Karan commanded, his presence compelling the darkness itself to obey.
'Biometric telemetry and neural oscillations stable. Cardiovascular stress within acceptable parameters. Request accepted. Granting access. Project-01 Protocol 26, disengaging the Primary Limiter.'
Karan's eyes, a deep, predatory crimson, glowed fiercely amidst the shadows coiling around him like a living entity—a whisper of power and secrets kept in the dark.