Page 48 of The Hyena’s Guardian

Matt tensed at the words. “The First King,” he said carefully.

Theron looked toward him sharply at the name. “You remember.”

“I remember enough to know I absolutely hate that sentence.”

For several seconds Theron remained silent. Then, “The First King was never king of people.”

Cold unease crawled through Matt’s chest.

Theron rose back to his feet while black water dripped from his claws onto the stone floor. “He was the first thing beneath the mountain to turn bonds into chains.”

The chamber felt colder.

Matt’s eyebrows climbed. “You’re talking about him like he’s older than shifters.”

“He is.”

A distant roar rolled through the catacombs. Theron continued anyway.

“The hungry ones were not his first victims. They were only the first to survive what he became.”

Matt remembered the pale creatures scrambling across the walls. “What did he do to them?”

Theron was silent for so long that Matt almost thought he wouldn’t answer.

“He found what they loved,” he said at last. “Then he taught them to love only him.”

Matt felt something cold settle beneath his ribs. “That’s… not possible.”

“No,” Theron said. “It should not be.”

“Then how are they like this?”

Theron’s eyes met his. “Because corruption begins long before the body changes. It devours memory. Choice. Identity. By the time the flesh follows… there is almost nothing left.”

Matt thought of the carvings deteriorating farther down the walls. The loss of language. The increasingly feral writing. Then another realization hit him.

“You were fighting it.”

Theron looked away, confirming what Matt had already understood.

“The catacombs change those trapped here long enough,” he said. “Body follows eventually.”

That somehow felt worse. Another tremor shook the chamber hard enough to send ripples racing across the underground stream. Theron’s head lifted sharply toward the tunnel behind them.

Matt saw the shift instantly. “What?”

Theron’s voice dropped lower. “His reach is growing.”

“The king?”

Theron nodded once.

Something between them reacted before Matt consciously understood why. A sudden violent pressure slammed through his chest hard enough to stagger him sideways. Images flashed through his mind again in fractured bursts: antlers rising through darkness, silver crowns submerged beneath black water, endless tunnels filled with kneeling figures whose eyes glowed white in the dark.

Then one final image surfaced above the others.

Theron stood beneath open sunlight, fully human and painfully young compared to the creature trapped beneath the mountain now. Blood covered his hands while grief carved so deeply into his expression that Matt felt it like a physical wound.