The war council convened not in the grand hall, but in the secured intimacy of the intelligence hub. The air was no longer thick with the shock of Alaric's betrayal, but with the grim pragmatism of its aftermath. Kael stood before the central holodisplay, which now showed a topographical map of the Northern Wastes, the Serpent's Tail Glacier a jagged white scar at its heart.

"The team will be small. No more than four," Kael declared, his voice echoing faintly in the chamber. "Speed and stealth are our only allies. This is not an invasion; it is a biopsy."

Lyra stood at his side, her arms crossed as she studied the map. "They'll need to be self-sufficient. Once they cross into the Wastes, there will be no support, no extraction until the mission is complete."

Ronan, his color returned though a persistent headache throbbed behind his eyes, nodded. "I've reviewed the dossiers. We need a tracker who can read ice and stone, a survivalist who won't freeze to death, and a fighter who can handle close-quarters combat in tight, icy spaces." He looked at Valen. "Your thoughts, Commander?"

Valen grunted, his scarred face impassive. "Rykar, from my third unit. Born and raised in the high crags. He can track a shadow over bare rock. For survival, Anya. She's a scout, knows more about polar flora and fauna than anyone. As for the fighter…" He paused, a rare flicker of uncertainty in his eyes. "The best close-quarters fighter we have, outside of this room, is Elias Hale."

The name hung in the air. It was a logical choice, yet a deeply personal one.

"He's not a soldier," Ronan countered. "He's an intelligence asset."

"He's a survivor," Lyra said, her voice firm, though a knot of fear tightened in her stomach. "He's spent years operating behind enemy lines with Crimson Paw. He's cunning, resourceful, and he can think on his feet. And his motivation…" She met Kael's gaze. "He'll be doing this for his family. For the pack that gave him a second chance. There is no one more motivated."

Kael held her look for a long moment, seeing the silent plea in her eyes—the fear for her brother warring with the strategic necessity. He gave a single, sharp nod. "Elias it is. Ronan, brief them. They leave at first light. Dismissed."

As Ronan and Valen left to prepare the team, Finn remained, his fingers dancing across a secondary console. "While you were talking, I finally managed a partial decrypt on that panicked signal Alaric sent. It's fragmented, but there are two data packets that survived. One is a standard high-priority alert, tagged for a recipient designated 'Jörmungandr'."

"Jörmungandr?" Lyra repeated. "The World Serpent from the old myths?"

"Seems the Northern Clans have a flair for the dramatic," Finn muttered. "The second packet is… different. It's not text. It's a string of numerical coordinates and a single, repeating image file." He tapped a key, and the image resolved on the screen.

It was a symbol. A stark, black gear, interlocked with a stylized, fanged wolf's head.

Kael and Lyra stared at it. It was unfamiliar, neither Silverfang nor Crimson Paw, nor any of the neutral packs.

"What is that?" Kael asked, a new prickle of unease running down his spine.

"I don't know," Finn admitted. "It's not in any of our heraldic databases. But the coordinates are clear. They're not in the Northern Wastes." He zoomed the main map out, the view scrolling south and east, past the contested territories, past the neutral zones, until it settled on a coastal region far from any shifter domains. The coordinates pinpointed a sprawling, metallic complex bordering a vast body of water. "They're in the Iron Citadel."

Lyra's breath caught. "The human city-state?"

The revelation was a paradigm shift. The Northern Clans were one thing—a known, if distant, quantity of shifter lore. The humans of the Iron Citadel were something else entirely. Technologically advanced, isolationist, and notoriously wary of shifters, whom they considered volatile relics of a bygone age.

"Why would Alaric be sending this symbol and these coordinates to the Northern Clans?" Lyra wondered aloud, her mind racing. "Is it a target? A threat? An alliance?"

"Or a transaction," Kael said, his voice low. The pieces were trying to form a picture, but the shape was alien and terrifying. A hidden war with the north was one thing. A war that might involve human technology was an entirely different kind of nightmare.

Later, in their chambers, the weight of the day pressed down on them. Kael was packing a small kit with grim efficiency—not for himself, but for Elias. A high-density thermal cloak, a signal beacon with a one-time burst capacity, a compact medkit.

Lyra watched him, her heart aching. "You don't have to do that. Valen's quartermasters have it handled."

"I know," he said, not looking up. His movements were precise, almost ritualistic. "He is your brother. The last of your blood. Sending him into this… it feels like a betrayal of the safety I promised you."

She crossed the room and stilled his hands with her own. "You promised me a future, Kael. A real one. This mission is to protect that future. Elias understands that. I understand that." She forced a small smile. "Besides, he'd never forgive us if we didn't send the best person for the job."

Kael finally looked at her, the storm in his eyes softened by a profound weariness. He cupped her face. "When this is over… the cabin. A month. No politics, no wars, no ghosts from the past. Just us."

"A month," she agreed, leaning into his touch. "I'll hold you to that."

Their moment of peace was shattered by a frantic, encrypted ping from Finn. The message was brief.

You need to see this. Now. It's about the humans.

They found Finn pale and trembling, not from fear, but from a kind of furious exhilaration. On his main screen was a live satellite feed, its origin masked by a dizzying number of proxy servers.

"I piggybacked on a commercial observation satellite passing over the coordinates Alaric sent," he explained, his voice rushed. "I thought I might see a city. I was wrong."

The feed showed the metallic complex by the water. But it wasn't a city. It was a shipyard. And cradled within it, surrounded by scaffolding and swarms of ant-like workers, was a vessel unlike anything they had ever seen. It was colossal, its hull not smooth but plated like some monstrous, mechanical armadillo. At its prow, painted in stark, white lines, was the same symbol: the gear and the fanged wolf.

"What in the name of the Moon is that?" Lyra whispered.

"It's a warship," Kael said, his voice hollow with disbelief. "An icebreaker. Look at the reinforced hull, the angled prow. It's designed to smash through pack ice."

Finn zoomed the feed. Along the ship's deck, they could now make out figures. Most were humans in environmental suits. But among them, moving with a familiar, predatory grace, were larger, bulkier forms.

Shifters.

Northern Clans shifters, their pale fur and thick builds visible even from orbit, were working alongside the humans.

"An alliance," Lyra breathed, the horror of it finally dawning. "The Northern Clans have formed an alliance with the Iron Citadel."

"It's not just an alliance," Finn corrected, his finger jabbing at a data readout. "Look at the energy signatures. That ship isn't just powered by combustion engines. It's got a miniature fusion core. And the weapon mounts… those are not standard ballistics. They're sonic and cryo-based. The humans aren't just giving them a ship. They're giving them technology. They're arming them."

The implications were earth-shattering. The Northern Clans were no longer just a hostile, primitive force. They were being equipped with human technology, transformed into a modern, industrialized military power. The icebreaker wasn't just a ship; it was a key, designed to unlock the southern waters and deliver a technologically superior army to the doorstep of the Dawn Empire.

Kael stared at the screen, at the symbol of the gear and the wolf, the banner of this terrifying new alliance. The scouting mission had just taken on a new, desperate urgency. They were no longer just scouting a clan of shifters. They were scouting the forward operating base of a combined shifter-human war machine.

He turned to Lyra, all thoughts of the cabin gone, replaced by the cold clarity of a commander facing an existential threat.

"The mission parameters have changed," he said, his voice like iron. "They are not just to observe. They are to find a weakness. In their defenses, in their alliance, in that ship. Anything." He looked back at the monstrous vessel on the screen, a leviathan being born in a foreign dock. "Because if we don't, that storm we've been preparing for won't be a blizzard. It will be an apocalypse."

A/N: I'm planning to introduce the human race so follow the plot... it's getting more exciting

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