Drauf’s story began long ago, in the frozen silence of the northern forests where winter stretched endlessly and survival favored the ruthless. No one remembered his parents, no village claimed him, no family searched for him. He entered the world only to be abandoned to it, a swaddled infant left among snow-covered roots. By all natural law, he should have died there.

But the wolves found him.

Some claimed it was a grieving mother wolf who discovered him, others that an entire pack circled the helpless child beneath a pale moon. Whatever the truth, they did not harm him. They sheltered him, fed him, and raised him as something between pup and human.
He learned the world through instinct: the meaning of hunger, the danger in stillness, the language of the wind. He grew strong, swift, and silent, a creature shaped by tooth and winter.

Then the hunters came.

Tracking wolves for pelts, they instead found a young man crouched among the trees, wild-eyed and feral. He moved with an animal’s grace and defended himself with an animal’s fury. It took several of them to bring him down, and even bound, he snapped and struggled like a trapped beast.
For his strength, they chained him.
For his difference, they feared him.
For his silence, they made him a slave.

Civilization was a cage he did not understand. He hauled timber, endured commands he barely comprehended, and suffered punishments he could not predict. It wore him down in ways the wilderness never had, grinding at the wildness in him until it dulled, but never fully died.

Then the raiders came.

Steel met wood, and fire lit the night. Where others fled, Drauf felt something awaken, a memory of chaos, freedom, and the hunt. In the confusion, he wrenched himself free. A raider confronted him, axe raised, but hesitated at the sight of this strange, feral man. Something in Drauf’s stance, untamed and unapologetically alive, made the warrior lower his weapon and laugh.

They took him with them.
At first as a curiosity.
Then as an equal.

Among them, he learned to wield steel with purpose, to sail the open waters, to fight with discipline rather than desperation. He built a reputation, feared by enemies and respected by allies. Villages that once whispered of a wolf-child now welcomed the warrior he had become. For a time, he found something resembling peace: camaraderie, belonging, a place by the fire.

But peace never settled comfortably on him.

The wilderness still tugged at him, softly at first and then with an ache he could no longer ignore. It called to the part of him that civilization had never truly tamed.

So one night, without farewell or permission, Drauf disappeared into the trees.

No blessing.
No goodbyes.
Just the quiet sound of a man returning to the only world that had ever claimed him.

He wandered for years. Sometimes he would linger at the edges of settlements he once knew, watching from the shadows. Seasons changed, faces aged, and graves replaced longhouses. People lived whole lives while he remained something apart, something older.

In time, he became a whispered tale: a figure seen moving between the pines, a shadow with eyes that gleamed like a wolf’s.
Part man, part myth.
Always wandering.
Always listening for the wild to call him deeper into itself once more.