Ludwig gripped the Soul Shackles with one hand, their chains faintly shimmering against the cold light spilling through the cracked windows. With his other hand, he hoisted Oathcarver, its brutal weight resting across his shoulder like an executioner's sentence in waiting. The greatsword's edge dragged along the manor floor, scraping over decayed marble and shattered tile as he stepped forward with calm, unnatural strength.
The werewolf—twice his size, twice his weight, and far more monstrous in build—was pulled like a corpse on a chain. Every few feet, its massive body hit another stair, jolting and bouncing with a sickening thud that echoed hollow through the dilapidated corridors of the Bastos Manor.
Yet Ludwig's pace never slowed.
He moved with the unshaken stride of one who carried not burden, but judgment.
The others followed at a distance, wordless, their eyes watching every step with something caught between awe and unease. To them, there was no sweat on Ludwig's brow, no tremble in his arms. He looked as regal as ever—slim, clean, composed—and yet the ease with which he hauled a beast of that size made it impossible to reconcile him with anything normal. Nobility didn't breed monsters like that.
But maybe something else did.
Once Ludwig reached the far end of the main hall, beneath the caved remnants of a chandelier that hung like a broken crown above them, he dropped the beast's body with a dull thump. The floor cracked beneath its mass. ɴᴇᴡ ɴᴏᴠᴇʟ ᴄʜᴀᴘᴛᴇʀs ᴀʀᴇ ᴘᴜʙʟɪsʜᴇᴅ ᴏɴ Novᴇl_Fire(.)net
Ludwig didn't flinch.
He sat down cross-legged not far from it, Oathcarver planted tip-first into the floor beside him. He watched the werewolf with the calm detachment of a surgeon observing a dying patient—not cruel, not apathetic. Simply... precise.
Then, with a thought, he summoned the veil of inspection.
Tier: Unique / Titled
Title: First Sire of the Treacherous Fanged Apostle
{Status Effects}: [Amputated], [Moon Cursed], [Unconscious]
[Sired Rage] – Increases damage the lower the user's health becomes.
[Slice and Dice] – Each claw strike has a 25% chance to cause [Laceration].
[Bestial Acuity] – Heightened evasion and partial precognition. Can instinctively avoid 10% of attacks.
[Beast Blood] – increased base regeneration of Speed, Stamina, and Health by 1% for every 1% missing.
Lore: Unknown of name, unknown of birth—this was the first werewolf sired by the Fanged Treacherous Apostle. Unlike his progenitor, who retained fragments of sanity, the First Sire was a failed vessel—nothing but a beast of bottomless hunger. Born in these very lands, he roamed endlessly, bound to the soil that rejected him, cursed to never leave its shadow.
Ludwig frowned, his skeletal fingers tightening slightly around Oathcarver's hilt. The stats were impressive, but the story behind them left a bad taste in his mouth.
'Nothing particularly out of the ordinary,' he thought, 'but that lore… Something's off about it.'
The others slowly approached from the far end of the hall, careful to keep a healthy distance between themselves and both the beast and Ludwig. Even Robin, who normally took comfort in the shadows and closeness of others, hung back with his arms crossed, thumb nervously stroking the hilt of one of his daggers.
"What now?" Robin asked, his voice low and sharp.
"We wait," Ludwig said. His eyes never left the beast. The air around them was still—too still.
Time passed. The flickering candlelight cast long shadows across the warped floor. Every breath felt watched.
Then, without warning, the beast stirred.
One breath. Shaky. Wet.
Its eyes opened slowly, sluggishly—as if dragged back from somewhere deep and dark.
One was crimson, the color of the cursed moon. The other—sickly yellow, rimmed with bestial intellect, or maybe madness. It looked around, head tilting sluggishly, like a wolf trying to remember if it had once been a man.
It growled, low and broken, baring its teeth.
Ludwig stood slowly, deliberately. His fingers closed around Oathcarver's hilt. He didn't raise it yet, but the intent was clear.
The beast tried to move, but the shackles held firm.
It struggled. Snarled. Its cauterized stump of an arm twitched weakly. Its eyes flared as it scanned the room—calculating. Desperate.
Ludwig's voice was calm and flat. "You're awake."
The werewolf didn't speak. It only growled louder, thrashing slightly before the futility of its bindings settled in.
He reached back and pulled Oathcarver free from the floor, lifting it in a single, reversed one-handed grip that tore the wooden planks apart. The blade rested on his shoulder again, the weight groaning against the ruined flooring.
"It seems you can't speak," he said. "Might as well end your misery now—"
The word came out cracked, as if spoken through a dusty throat that had forgotten language.
Ludwig paused, his eyes narrowing.
"Grant me… mercy… before it is too late…"
The yellow eye flinched.
The red bled outward.
"That ring…" the beast whispered, gaze lowering to Ludwig's hand. "That belonged to… Lord Dante…"
Ludwig glanced down at the ring on his gloved finger—the Sanguine Seal he'd claimed from the Batlord.
"And those clothes…" the beast continued, voice hoarse and trembling. "Regalias of the House… Bastos…The Blood Lords"
Its eyes flicked upward. Bloodshot. Clearer than before.
"But they all died... except for the young master...Are you… Van Dijk's descendant…?"
Ludwig's gaze remained unreadable. "Something like that."
"I… shouldn't live… I never should have…" the werewolf said. "I was unworthy of the blessings of this house. Please—kill me. End it. Before it's too late."
"A monster's final regrets," Timur muttered under his breath.
"There's still humanity in his eyes," Melisande said softly, eyes lowering with a trace of pity.
"It only regrets when its teeth are broken," Gorak said flatly. "That's no redemption. Just the whimper of a chained beast."
He stepped closer. "Why did they let you live?"
The werewolf's head tilted slightly. Its red eye pulsed.
"Let me live…? I'm already dead. Only on borrowed time now. I've been hollowed out."
It began to shudder. The shaking started in its shoulders. Small. Then it spread.
"Please…" it hissed. "End it… I don't want to become like them…"