Silvertip Mountain cultist

the splashes of the woman's blood had not left his mind. merrick felt himself contorting inside the cave. it was as if his bones were breaking. reforming him. 
merrick was reshaping 
and what emerged from the crystalline maze was hardly wolf. whittled down to his sinew and his muscles, merrick pulsed with a deep and hungry violence.
tongue slid to wet his teeth;
merrick blended with the night and with the mountain's shadows. he did not emerge from the fringe of forest to greet his rawboned unchild.
she was no longer his.
when merrick's scarred and one-eyed face at last bloomed from the foliage, it was without a fatherly love upon his face. he stared at her with a long etching of moments. ingram went fully ignored.
"you were meant to be her heir." his voice was a cracked rasp. "she is dead."
the madness lurched. merrick drew a shaking breath to think of her black fur fading to nothingness along the scarlet winding. beneath the snow.
"you abandoned ursus." surely she understands by now that the sons and daughters of merrick and astara have always been held to far higher standards. 
the remaining eye burned. merrick shifted closer. the serpentine coils roiled across his expression. "for what reason have you come back now?"