I ran.
Not like a soldier charging into glory, nor like a beast hunting its prey, but like a cornered animal. My feet pounded the earth with the desperate rhythm of survival, clumsy yet unrelenting. I ran the way a golden retriever would hurl itself at its master—except there was no warmth waiting for me. Only cold steel. Only teeth. Only death.
My mouth hung open, dragging in ragged gulps of air that scalded my chest like flame. My throat clawed for oxygen, and every breath came with the burn of fire against raw flesh. Tears stung my eyes, but I blinked through them, refusing to stop. Boots dug deep into soil, gouging furrows like a marching soldier pressed into the earth by the weight of invisible drums.
Run, run, run.
My vision darted everywhere at once—the trees, the shadows, the trembling grass. I searched for the slightest flicker of movement, any omen that the head start was over. And all the while, the moon stalked me above, silver and merciless, a bird of prey circling and waiting to swoop.
I felt eyes on me. Cold. Watching. Waiting. Like blood spilled into still water, the awareness spread and spread until it drowned thought itself.
Running was not new to me. I had been trained for endurance, discipline, survival. But running because your life was the stake? That was something else. My stomach twisted, a stone sinking into black water. My legs became lead, my knees turned to jelly.
I cannot outrun—
Snap!
My foot struck something in the dark, a root, a stone, I could not tell. I stumbled forward, fighting to right myself.
And then—
Whistle. Whoosh.
Stab.
A bolt lanced into my side, pain blooming white-hot across my ribs. I bit down hard on my scream, teeth grinding so tightly I feared they would break. Something warm spread down my abdomen. Blood. My own blood.
So quick. Already…? Was the head start a lie? Or just a mockery?
I ran harder, abandoning direction, abandoning thought. Branches lashed at my arms, clawing my face. The air smelled of iron now, of wet copper, sharp and choking. My hair rose as if the cold itself had been charged with the tension the air carried.
"Where are they?" I thought wildly, my mind racing. "Where are the hounds?"
No bark. No growl. Only silence.
Only my own ragged breathing.
Only the drumbeat of my heart in my skull.
And that silence blinded me worse than any darkness.
Whistle.
An arrow tore into my calf.
I crumpled for half a second, then staggered up, rage igniting where fear had lived. My grip tightened on the glaive until the wood creaked. My blood dripped into the soil, but my teeth bared like a wolf cornered.
I burst into a clearing, where the trees thinned and the moon finally caught me in its cruel embrace. The silver light fell across me like a noose.
I froze.
Sweat poured from me, dripping from my chin like melting ice. The weapon in my hand no longer felt like a tool—it was an anchor. My boots dug deep into the snow beneath, roots clinging to the last shred of defiance left in me.
The silence stretched.
Longer.
Colder.
I smelled my own blood. Thick. Metallic. The forest drank it eagerly.
Snap.
A twig underfoot.
And then—
"זהירה."
The voice whispered through the trees, a serpent's hiss in a language my mind half-remembered.
Zehira.
Beware.
Instinct dropped me into a crouch just as an arrow tore the air above my head. I rolled hard, snow burning my cheek, and scrambled back to my feet. Another shaft buried itself where I had just stood.
The cold stung my nose, my cheeks raw with the wind. My wounds throbbed, every pulse painting red across the pale floor of the forest.
And then came the sound.
Clop.
One step.
Another.
The skeletal horse broke the treeline, its rider shrouded in shadow. His eyes glowed green, unnatural fire spilling from the sockets like lanterns from the abyss.
The trees rattled as more emerged. The ring closed in.
Surrounded. Enclosed. Hounds snapping, riders hemming me in.
I lifted the glaive high, its blade catching the moonlight. My arms trembled, but I leveled it at the crowned one, its steel a poor man's prayer.
Come then.
If this was to be the end, then I would end on my feet.
"We all fall down," I whispered through clenched teeth.
Elsewhere…
The frost deepened. Snow fell in sheets, coating ground and branch alike in white death.
Crunch.
A horse's hoof sank into the frost. Then another.
The Riders came. The same as those who hunted me, yet here they pressed against Omega and Mésos.
The skeletal mounts exhaled plumes of frozen mist, their glowing eyes casting the battlefield in an eerie emerald glow.
Omega and Mésos stood back to back, their own blood dripping to melt the snow.
Mésos's left arm was gone. Only a bloodied stump remained, wrapped hastily in cloth now black with saturation. Her sword lay half-buried nearby, snow crusting its hilt.
Omega looked no better. She stood rigid, arrows sprouting from her body like cruel quills—one in the thigh, another in her arm, one deep in her gut. She was still upright, but she resembled a porcupine who had been taught pain.
Mésos's lips curved in a wry smile. "Perhaps… a head-on attack was not the wisest plan."
Omega, grimacing, scanned the enemy ranks. "Do you think Luna fares better than us?"
"Perhaps," Mésos chuckled, coughing blood onto the snow. "Perhaps not. Either way… I reckon we can call this task a wrap."
She bent to retrieve her weapon.
"Now—" her eyes gleamed with grim mirth "—let's see what is so interesting about dying in battle."
With a final cry, she lunged at the leader astride his skeletal mount.
Her blade arced—
Stab!
A spear punched through her midsection before she could land her strike.
Her eyes widened. She choked on blood, looking down at the shaft piercing her stomach. Her gaze lifted to meet her killer's. Cold. Empty. Green.
She smiled through the blood.
And in that same heartbeat—
Omega struck.
Her blade slipped between the Rider's ribs, biting deep into his exposed chest.
The night shook with the clash of steel and death.