The golden savanna stretched endlessly beneath a sky bleached pale by the midday sun. Tall grasses swayed like restless sentinels, their whispers carrying secrets across the plains. Mufasa and Taka stood side by side atop a weathered kopje, their tawny coats glinting like burnished copper. They were princes of this land, though neither bore the imperious air their lineage might demand. Mufasa's mane, russet and untamed, bore a single jagged scar along its left flank—a mark of mercy, not conquest. Taka's fur lay perpetually ruffled, as though he'd just risen from a nap in the thornbrush, yet his amber eyes glinted with the sharpness of a storm-washed horizon.

Below them, Lira moved like shadow given form. The lioness paused mid-stride, her whiskers twitching as a metallic tang cut through the dry air. A crumpled shape lay half-buried in the red dust—a rabbit, its neck bent at an unnatural angle. She circled the carcass once, twice, nostrils flaring. Blood pooled dark beneath its fur, too fresh to belong to the scavenger's usual fare.

"Not hyenas," she murmured, more to herself than the brothers. Her tail lashed once, a black whip against the parched earth. When she lifted her gaze, sunlight caught the green-gold striations in her eyes. "This kill reeks of deliberation." The words left her muzzle in a velvet hiss, the kind that raises hackles on lesser creatures.

Mufasa descended the rocks with the liquid grace of falling water, his massive paws leaving no imprint on the wind-scoured stone. "Cats don't waste meat," he rumbled, bending to inspect the rabbit. A claw—longer and straighter than any lion's—glistened amid the matted fur.

Taka's chuckle carried an edge like flint. "Nor do they hunt at noon." He remained atop the outcrop, but his stance had shifted—haunches coiled, ears pivoting to catch the sigh of the wind. The scar along his muzzle twisted as he spoke. "Our woods shelter more than shadows today, brother."

A vulture's cry fractured the stillness overhead. Lira watched the brothers exchange a glance that spoke in a language older than roars—a silent calculus of threat and territory. Somewhere beyond the acacia grove, a branch snapped. The three lions turned as one, the air suddenly thick with the electricity that precedes lightning.

The savanna held its breath.

Then the grasses parted with a whisper, blades bending beneath the weight of a lioness whose pelt mirrored Mufasa's sunlit copper, though her gaze lacked his storm-edged intensity. Her eyes, wide and luminous as dawn-lit water, fixed not on the brothers atop the kopje, but on the creature standing amid the blood-scented dust. The wolf's coat was the white of bones bleached by centuries, her frame towering even against Taka's broad silhouette. Sunlight glinted off her claws—unnervingly straight, like thorns stripped of their curve.

"Who are you?" The lioness's voice wavered, a rare crack in the regal composure her lineage demanded. Her paws shifted backward, etching faint crescents into the earth.

Lira's muzzle lifted, a slow, deliberate motion that made the scar along Mufasa's flank twitch in recognition. The wolf's ears tilted forward, not in threat, but in something far more disquieting: amusement. "I am the Wolf of Mile," she said, her voice a riverbed rasp that seemed to slither through the heat. "Though I wonder, little princess—do the winds still carry your mother's songs to you at dusk? Or did they die with her?"

The lioness froze. Somewhere in the acacia grove, a drongo shrieked a warning.

Mufasa descended the rocks, his shadow falling across the wolf's pale form. "You tread on claimed land, stranger," he growled, though his tail remained still—no lash, no challenge. A prince's restraint.

Lira's laugh was a sound like dry reeds breaking. "Land changes masters, golden one. Even stars fall." Her gaze flicked to Taka, who had crept silently down the kopje's eastern face, muscles taut as braided vines. "Ask your scarred brother. He knows the taste of shifting loyalties."

Taka's snarl died unvoiced as the lioness stepped forward, her fear eclipsed by rising fury. "You don't speak her name," she hissed, fangs bared. "You don't—"

"Ah." The wolf's tail swept the dust, stirring motes of red that hung like suspended blood. "There's the fire I recall." She turned, sunlight catching the jagged notch in her left ear—a mark that mirrored the rabbit's fatal wound. "Tell your kings," she called over her shoulder, melting into the grass with ghostly silence, "the Mile remembers its debts."

The brothers exchanged a glance heavy with unspoken words. Above them, vultures began to circle.