"Haven't you heard the tales, little pup? Those ghost stories about the wolves that aren't wolves, like you or I? They mingle with our kind, almost indifferentiable, but they are a far older breed, born alongside our first ancestors -- and far stranger. You may not notice at first, but small things begin to gnaw at the edges of perception. It's something wrong in their gait; something too calculated and too smooth. It's something terrifying in their eyes; they know things that you don't want to know. Their teeth are too bright, too sharp. You don't know what they really want or why they're here because they live just like their friends at first. You can't see the danger, like a spell cast over your mind, not until they're gone again.
They are like a sickness, and when they run to carry their sickness elsewhere, they paint the Earth with the blood of their packs. These are born of the Trickster Wolf, who would steal the Moon right out of the sky if he could, but instead he settles for stealing her children.
Was your mother always so tall? Her eyes always so bright? Do you even know where your mother came from?"
Ashen's lineage has been lost to time. All he knows of his mother are burning yellow eyes and a mixed scent of herbs he's never been able to identify. The pack that raised him would only say she was a wanderer, who went as quickly as she came. They were more than eager to send him on his own way when he came to a certain age. He fled at the ends of their teeth, escaping south from the mountains, with only Burning Sun at his side. His paws lead them across warm plains and burning sands, and finally, deep into the murky wetlands.
After many moons scavenging on the edges of other packs, it was there that they found the clearing they would come to call home. Bathed in the light of the Full Moon, Ashen felt the soot-stained rock beckoning him to climb and bask in her glow at its peak. There, he was struck with a vision. A safe place for him and his mate, and others like him.
Once, Ashen could be seen often among the members of his pack. When he was younger, he threw himself full-heartedly into all aspects of the pack, sacrificing all but life and limb to ensure the success of his mate and the lone wolves they had welcomed into their home. With age and experience, he learned to delegate and accept help from these very wolves, coming to understand the meaning of "family" and "pack" in a way his birth-pack had never taught him. Now, it is rare to see the Alpha in the clearing. He moves through his pack as a silent shadow of the wolf he used to be. In his old age, he has taken steps back, preferring to seclude himself within the Ashen Rock. He allows his eldest daughter and current Fang, Fireside, to keep an eye on things alongside Hex, and trusts them to alert him should anything require his verdict.
After the passing of Burning Sun, Ashen did not leave his den even once. He spent his last days simply waiting for Moonrise, and then entering the Dreamlands. On his final eve, he entered the Tricker Wolf's realm of dreams one last time, and simply did not wake up again. His daughters were his only witnesses.
