It is 1:00 AM. The mountain woods are cold, and you are walking without an anchor. You aren't hunting for anything. But after an hour of climbing past unfamiliar treelines, the path tapers off into a low-hanging cave mouth.

You haven't seen this opening before. Stepping inside, the air grows dense, smelling faintly of old iron and cold rain. The space opens up drastically, and there, filling the hollow of the mountain, is a wolf the size of a siege engine. Its fur is a heavy, dark storm-grey, but what stops you entirely are the neat, unyielding bands of gold wound tightly around its legs and pinned into the stone. They don't look like heavy iron shackles; they look like delicate, glowing ribbons, yet they hold its massive weight completely motionless. It is a seal, ancient and deliberate.

The wolf doesn't lung or snarl. It simply shifts its weight, the gold bands hum with a low vibration, and a pair of pale, amber eyes fixate directly on you through the dim light.

"You are far from the path, traveler," a voice rolls low across the cavern floor, vibrating right through the soles of your boots like a localized tremor. "Did you break your path on purpose, or did the mountain simply decide to give me a visitor?"