Maggie shot him a hard look, but this ti, there was no reproach. Only a nervous tension, the kind you feel in muscles just before striking. Like a drawn bow. Like a storm still holding back its cry.
Elisa nodded slowly. Her eyes shone with a new glint, not the reassuring kind. Sothing deeper, older. A fire beneath the ice. A silent acceptance of what they were becoming—or what they had always been.
They set off again, without a single word exchanged, their steps devoured the damp earth, cleaving the mist like a blade. The moor closed behind them, swallowing their silhouettes. Like three shadows lost in the grey.
The Hunt had resud.
There was no more hesitation. No room for doubt, nor for turning back. It wasn’t rage driving them, nor courage. It was sothing colder. Fear...
A visceral, absolute fear, but one they refused to yield to.
They walked as one enters a tomb. Or as one erges from it.
Each standing stone they passed seed to vibrate with a mory. A split sword, twisted armor, a beast’s fang embedded in the rock. The ground itself seed to rember the screams. Dylan felt the muffled rumble of past conflict beneath his feet. He didn’t know if it was his imagination or lingering essence in the air. But he felt it. He felt sothing watching them. Not the Guardian. Not yet. Sothing larger. As if the land itself rembered them.
Then ca the first howl.
It was a rending distance away, like a call, an invitation, as if the beasts around them were daring them to challenge them.
They didn’t stop, though; the Hunt doesn’t ask for permission, nor for any invitation. It begins by itself. It takes itself.
Suddenly, a shape detached itself from the mist ahead. Tall, gnarled, made of sinew and shadows. Red eyes glowed like embers, with no face around them.
An abomination unlike the others. This one had followed them, waited, listened. It had seen what Dylan had done. And it wanted to taste that essence.
Maggie said nothing. And without lingering, she positioned her axe, ready to swing at the slightest movent.
Elisa stepped back, hiding behind her two companions, making herself discreet but ready to strike when an opening revealed itself.
Dylan raised his right arm. It no longer hurt. Even the slight scar was vanishing before his eyes, a thing that frightened him but for now could only stay in the back of his mind.
Their eyes t one last ti. And they didn’t need to exchange a single word.
Just significant nods.
And all three charged towards the enemy.
---
The silence split with a single sharp crack. Not a cry, not a growl. Only the hiss of three bodies propelled forward, driven by the sa icy will.
Maggie arrived first, like a boulder tumbling down a slope. Her axe described a brutal arc, aiming for the abomination’s gnarled legs. The tal struck the dense shadow with a dull thud, like hitting soaked leather. The creature barely faltered, its ember eyes blinked. A shadow limb, faster than sight, lashed out. Maggie crossed her axe, took the blow. The impact made her grit her teeth, her boots plowed the damp earth. She held. Just.
In her wake, Elisa had sprung from nowhere, like a viper. She wasn’t aiming for the body. Too massive, too strange. Her daggers flew towards the red eyes, twin blades tracing silver flashes in the mist. The abomination turned its head with disconcerting fluidity. One dagger ricocheted off a shadow horn sprouting from its shoulder, the other grazed its non-existent cheek, leaving only a trail of black smoke. A sharp, furious hiss issued from the indistinct form.
Dylan was there. Not with Maggie’s fury, nor Elisa’s agility. With sothing new. Dangerous. It was his precision with his machette, even though it was half broken.
His blade fell with an almost clinical sharpness, guided by instinct, by the stigma, by that thing within him that had sensed where to strike. He didn’t aim for the head, nor the heart—this creature likely had neither—but just below the shadow collarbone, where the flesh seed to vibrate with poorly contained essence.
The blow sank in. And for the first ti, the thing scread.
It wasn’t a cry of pain. Rather... a choked laugh. As if it had been waiting for this mont. As if the touch of tal on its essence had excited it.
With a brutal gesture, it shoved Maggie and Elisa aside with a vast, almost lazy backhand. The two flew backwards, hitting standing stones with sharp cracks and gasps of pain.
It turned towards Dylan. The ember eyes narrowed to two thin slits, avid. It drew itself up completely—imnse, almost double its size now that it was no longer pretending to crawl—and its body shifted, coiling like a beast about to pounce. A network of glistening sinews wove beneath its misty skin, tracing a pulsing red heart in its chest.
It charged.
The ground shook. The air imploded around it.
But Dylan didn’t move.
He wasn’t afraid.
Not because he was brave.
But because sothing within him scread louder than the beast before him. Sothing that had tasted pain, tasted power, and had no intention of retreating.
The creature struck. Its shadow claws traced sharp lines. Dylan tried to dodge... but in vain.
The claws sank into his chest with a hideous sound, a wet tearing. Pain exploded, white, total. He scread. A scream ripped from the pit of his stomach, the kind you push out without air, without control.
The world reeled. He fell to his knees.
His torso opened like a rotten flower. Ribs showing. Blood, blackened, stread slowly. He felt his heart beating raw, vulnerable, almost visible—a red pulse in the great cold.
The beast recoiled, surprised.
It wasn’t its own attack that disturbed it.
It was what it saw.
Dylan’s flesh... was regrowing.
Where it had just torn, fibers were already closing. Bones moved, clicked, realigned, like tiny beasts resuming their place. Veins reconnected.
A trickle of blood reford, flowing backwards, from the ground towards the wound. And the skin, pale, bare, began to spread again, too fast, like a living shroud.
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