Lupaena — The Wolf-Marked

Her crown is a beast,
her gaze a snare.
Two hungers breathe in one,
neither at rest.

Lupaena was once a huntress who swore to protect her kin from the shadows. She slew a wolf beneath the blood moon, cutting its head to wear as a trophy. But the Codex does not suffer trophies. The beast’s spirit bled into her, its fangs dripping still across her brow, its howl echoing through her lungs.
 
By day she walks as woman, silent, mourning the lives she could not save. By night the wolf stirs, her jaw aching with borrowed fangs, her eyes burning with its endless rage. She is not wholly woman nor wholly beast, but a binding of both, stitched in grief and blood.
 
The Codex calls her the Wolf-Marked — a reminder that every victory is also a curse. Those who hear her voice claim it shifts mid-syllable, one tone of sorrow, one of hunger. Some say she will one day tear the headdress from her scalp, but others whisper it is no longer headdress at all — it is her skull.