The day began like any other, with the brothers returning from the hunt, dust on their legs and laughter in their voices. But something felt wrong.

  Aegis had howled the night before—low, restless, pacing the edges of the forest as if warning them of something unseen.

  Romulus felt it first.

  Remus noticed the silence that followed them, the way the villagers watched with wide, uncertain eyes. Whispers traveled like wind slipping under doors.

  Finally, an old woman stepped forward, trembling as if carrying a weight she had hidden for years.

  “Come,” she whispered. “There is something you must see.”

  She led them through a narrow path that wound between broken pillars and ancient foundations—the remains of a stone hall older than the village itself. Aegis followed close behind, ears flat, tail stiff, sensing danger in memory rather than in scent.

  Inside, dust swirled in the broken light filtering through the collapsed roof.

  The old woman placed a trembling hand on a cracked wall where faded carvings told a story only the elders remembered.

  “You ask who you are,” she said. “Then learn.”

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  Her voice broke.

  “You are sons of the king.”

  Romulus felt his heartbeat freeze.

  Remus’s fists clenched at his sides.

  The woman continued, looking at the floor as if afraid to meet their eyes.

  “When the prophecy spoke of twin sons who would rise against him… he ordered you taken from the palace. Not to be raised. Not to be hidden.”

  A breath. A sob.

  “To be killed.”

  Aegis growled, low and dangerous, the sound echoing through the ruined hall.

  Romulus stepped back, as if the truth itself had struck him. “The king… tried to kill us?”

  “He believed you were a threat,” the woman whispered. “He feared you before you could walk.”

  Remus’s voice was quiet, steady in the way storms are steady—held together by force.

  “And we are his … sons?”

  The woman nodded.

  “He claimed you died the night you were born. But some of us knew the truth… and did nothing.”

  Her shame was a shadow stretching across the room.

  Romulus turned away, jaw trembling, eyes burning.

  Remus stared at the wall, at the carved figure of a king towering over smaller shapes—children fleeing with arms outstretched.

  So this was why they had been abandoned.

  Why Aegis had found them.

  Why danger always followed like a second shadow.

  Aegis brushed her head against Remus’s hand, then Romulus’s—one after the other—as if reminding them that whatever their blood was, their family had already been chosen long ago.

  Romulus whispered, “He tried to erase us.”

  Remus answered, voice quiet but unbroken:

  Then we must live quietly… and avoid bringing trouble to anyone.

  Aegis lifted her head and let out a single, sharp howl that carried across the stones—

  not a warning, not sorrow.

  A promise.