Back in the day… when everything was still raw. Still a wound screamin’ blood. When breathin' hurt and silence meant someone was reloadin’. And the city? It wasn’t a city yet. Just chaos wearin’ a broken face. The survivors carved up what was left. Gangs. Corpos like Blackbourne. Rioters with too much hate and not enough bullets. Everyone wanted a piece. No one cared who bled to give it to 'em. Some say Sanction should’ve died right there. Hell, maybe it should’ve. Then Wolfe came. Didn’t crawl in like the rest of us. Wasn’t scrappin’ for scraps or screamin’ in alleyways. He came fast. Smart. Mean. Unkillable, some said. Might be true. Plenty tried. But here’s the thing—he brought Power. Real Power. Not muscle. Not bravado. Influence. Wealth. Control from somewhere deeper. Somewhere not of this world. He didn’t rebuild ‘cause he gave a damn. He rebuilt ‘cause he could. Street by street. Block by bloody block. Even while throwin' down with the bastards who’d become the syndicates—he built. And the battlefield changed. One day it was blades in the dark, bones in the gutters. Next day, politics with pistols. Who could do the most good while cuttin’ the deepest. Not everyone bought in. Plenty still wanted to watch it burn. But for the rest of us—mercs, solos—it was different. The blood didn’t stop. It just got cleaner. Sharper. Professional. And we? We adapted. Like rats with rifles. Didn’t have a choice. You learn to hunt or you end up tagged on a wall. Some of us started runnin’ in packs. Not gangs. Not crews. Packs. Bled beside the same bastards enough times, we stopped needin’ orders. Didn’t flinch when lead flew. Didn’t hesitate when it was time to pull. Trust. Fire. Fang. That’s all it took. They called us wolves—joke at first. Wolfe’s little dogs, sniffin’ for scraps. But we owned it. Wore it like armor. Wasn’t long before we had a code. Not written. Not enforced. But understood. We don’t kill for nothin’. But we’ll kill for everything. Thought I’d seen it all by then. Turns out, I hadn’t even seen the start. Then came the First Snarl. You don’t talk about it in detail. You just *know*. Something changed. A line got crossed. A legend got born. Story goes, Wolfe and some syndicates got spooked. Figured we were gettin’ too good. Too sharp. Too tight. Could be a threat. Not all agreed. But enough of those bastards did. Enough to try and put us down like we were still dogs. They went to war with us. Could’ve worked. If they hadn’t killed Grandma Sly. She ran the Den. Original owner. All grit and spitfire. Could stop a brawl with a word. Kill a deal with a stare. Every merc worth their iron passed through her doors. Smoked cheap cloves. Cursed like a saint. Gave a damn when no one else did. I still remember her. But that? That was the rallying cry. They killed Sly. The wolves didn’t whimper. They howled. And that was the end of pretendin’ we were anything less than a pack with teeth. After that? Sanction never slept again. Deep in the Den, past burn-scarred booths and merc-curdled neon, there’s a stairwell no one talks about. No signs. No guards. Just a door—steel torn with claw marks. Keypad caked in blood-brown rust. You don’t go down there unless you’ve earned the silence. Below, in the low-lit hush of the Fang Room, the air shifts. Thicker. Tighter. Like the walls remember what happened—and they’re still chewin’ it over. That’s where the mural lives. No signatures. No names. No one dares. A lone figure, backlit by fire and ruin, stands over twitchin’ hellhound corpses. Armor cracked. Blade broken. But the eyes? They glow like sunrise through smoke. Behind him, the mark—half-wolf, half-fang—drips crimson down ferrocrete. The First Snarl. They say Wolfe called us dogs nippin’ at his scraps. Said we’d never stand. Said the city would always belong to the strongest. But that night, the wolves howled back. And one of 'em didn’t stop. No one knows his name. Some say it was Britain. Some say it was three Operators movin’ as one. Some say it was death itself wearin’ a merc’s skin. Doesn’t matter. The Snarl was when wolves stopped bein’ mercs. And Sanction learned what a creed with teeth could do.