MagicalDoctor

The cannibalization of the divine, the grand phlegmatic acceptance of death, the self-lacerating search for meaning, all of these were preserved in the rubies. The rubies were a way to recapture the soul.

And a soul is only a shadow, of course. Not the reality. Not the source. A shadow of the divine. A reflection of its grandeur. The rubies were an instrument of transcendence in the form of a slavering wolf.
Tetsuo had carved them with his own hands. He saw them as a way to create beauty from ashes, to give form to emptiness, to make of the void a manifestation of the divine.
The rubies did all of this and more.

But something was wrong. These Barghests had been made in the mortal realm, not in the spiritual world. They were flawed and broken. Their power was not pure, not like the power of their forbearers.
Tetsuo had done something wrong. He had made the mistake of vesting his own ego in his own internal experience. He had confused his own yearning for meaning with the meaning itself. He had made the fatal error of believing that the power of the rubies was pure, untainted by the mundane.
The Shade, the Emptiness of the Scold's Bridle, infected the mewling pups and froze them tight in a painful rictus. Not a muscle moved. The air was still and silent as death.
Both of them weeped for their accursed children, and the whole of the forest echoed with their grief.
Then, slowly, slowly, the mewling pups began again to move. The rubies were alive, with two souls, the Shade and the Emptiness of the Scold's Bridle.

Tetsuo gazed upon his beautiful creation, his terrible mistake, and cried out his sorrow. Beauty is one of those things nobody can really define, but that we can all agree exists. Bridle saw it in the icy clarity of the rubies. Scold saw it in the frozen motion of the pup's shadows. And Tetsuo saw it when he gazed upon his masterpiece, and cried to the forest in a voice of sorrow and joy.
Their children would live. Their children would be whole.