The trail was fresh—blood dark against the stone, sharp on the wind. Every heartbeat pressed the hunters closer to the ruin where the beast waited, wounded but far from broken.
[Hunt for the Wounded Beast]
The frantic clang of the alarm had faded into the night, leaving an unnerving silence in its wake. But for Kaylah, it was a silence that carried a thousand questions. She knew what that noise meant. Not a stray beast, not a lost scavenger, but something with enough size and fury to test their defenses. Eris, still in a deep sleep, his breathing soft and even, seemed untouched by the danger that had rattled the very stone of their home.
By morning, the story was already a legend whispered over thin broth. A lone glass-back wolf, bigger than any they'd seen before, had battered the outer gate. It was a beast with a matted, silver-streaked coat and a deep wound in its flank, as if it had been gored by something much larger. Though the night watch had driven it off, a wounded beast was a desperate one, and the hunters of Haven Below knew that desperate things never truly left until they were dead.
The group hunting team moved out under the first gray light of morning, a grim and silent procession. At their head was Barik, a battle-hardened man in his mid-forties. Scars crisscrossed his face and arms, telling stories of a thousand skirmishes with the ruin, and his presence alone made the others stand a little straighter.
Beside him was Dara, a young woman no older than twenty, with a wiry frame and quick, intelligent eyes that constantly scanned the ground. She was their tracker, her skills honed from years of following the faint, fractured trails of their world. She's an outlander who was accepted by the tribe because of her skill. The elders were wary at first, but after saving her team members many times in the past, she gained their support and trust.
Bringing up the rear were Joeren and Renzo, their presence an open secret of tribal politics. The two had pushed their way onto the team, using their uncle's influence as an elder to gain experience.
Joeren, swaggering with a self-assured grin, held his head high. He carried the heavy-duty bolt-launcher, a formidable weapon Kaylah and her team had spent a winter piecing together from rusted pipes and a salvaged piston.
He had paid well for it in meat and supplies, but Kaylah knew its design better than anyone. She knew its strengths, the way its heavy bolts could pierce old metal, but she also knew its weaknesses. Its mechanism was prone to jamming if a single drop of grime found its way inside.
Renzo, was equally elated, his face with a grin from ear to ear.
The team was only seven strong, a bare minimum for a hunt of this magnitude. They couldn't ask for more to leave the safety of Haven Below; the elders had to be prepared for any surprise attack heavier than the lone beast they sought out. The hunters knew that the earlier they could follow the trail, the better. They wouldn't allow the beast time to heal. A wounded thing could be tracked, but a healed one would vanish back into the unforgiving labyrinth of the ruin, making it impossible to find.
* * *
[The Beast in the Gorge-Dara's POV]
The elders' instruction was clear, and it was a promise: "Find it. A wounded beast is a threat to us all. Kill it, but protect yourselves first, and return home safe."
Their instruction was clear, and it carried the weight of a promise: "Find it. A wounded beast is a threat to us all. Kill it, but protect yourselves first. And return home safe." I repeated those words in my mind, anchoring myself with their certainty. But there were other voices, quieter ones, that echoed beneath them; expectations left unspoken, obligations I carried from people who had never set foot in Haven Below.
The ones who sent me... they speak of duty and legacy, but I've never seen their faces soften with grief. I've never heard them speak of mercy.
I had reasons of my own for joining this hunt. Not just to protect the walls we slept behind, or the lives that depended on this team's survival. There were threads pulling me from further away—distant names, vanished bloodlines, old stories twisted into warnings. Perhaps I wasn't only here to slay a beast.
Return home safe, the elders said.
But which home? The question lingered, unwanted.
Every step I took with this team, every shared meal and tired smile, made the weight harder to carry. I was supposed to stay distant. Observing was safer than belonging.
But how do you observe people you've started to care about?
The main gate of Haven Below creaked open. It's an uneven patchwork of scrap metal and salvaged beams, welded together into a crude but sturdy barricade. Deep dents marred its surface, scars from the wounded beast's violent assault the night before.
Our team stepped out in silence. Most wore grim expressions, boots crunching over ash and gravel, the weight of what awaited us pressing into every step. Only Joeren and Renzo moved with swagger, strutting ahead like heroes in a tale not yet written. They shouted to no one in particular, voices echoing off the cliff walls.
"We'll bring back the monster's head!" Joeren yelled as if he's leader of the group.
Renzo raised his blade with a flourish and seconded, "Try not to fall behind!"
Everyone in Haven was hopeful, but none was cheerful enough to react to the clamor.
The air outside was dry and acrid, sharp against the throat. The wind carried with it a weight; something heavy brewing on the horizon. A storm was coming. Maybe tomorrow. Maybe sooner.
I caught Barik's eye and gave him a subtle nod. He read the message clearly.
We couldn't afford to linger. He understood; and beckoned all to move forward.
My hood was pulled low, shielding my face, but my eyes were wide and sharp, scanning every shadow. The air tasted of rust and wet earth, the typical scent of the ruin, but today it was laced with something new. Unsettling. The coppery tang of the beast's blood.
My boots made no sound on the wet, cracked pavement. I was a ghost, a legend from a world the hunters of Haven had forgotten.
The tracks were clear to me, but not to them. I knew we needed to be fast, but a wounded beast is more dangerous than a healthy one. We needed to be cautious. This beast wasn't fleeing; it was dragging itself forward, each step heavy, uneven, and wounded, yet it wasn't afraid.
But its trail was being muddled. Its dark blood marks on the ground were already being scuffed by clumsy boot prints.
"Hold it, you two! Your tracks are confusing Dara if you're that far ahead of us," Barik warned, his voice low and firm.
"The tracker is slowing us down," Joeren grumbled, kicking a loose stone. The two cousins were young, brave, and strong. They wanted to prove their worth, not wait patiently for a tracker to catch up. They grumbled, squinting ahead into the rain, eager for the hunt.
They could ignore me, but not Barik. I was an outlander; Barik was different. He was born in Haven, and his loyalty had been tested in a hundred hunts. They stopped, their impatience a palpable thing, and begrudgingly waited for me to lead the way.
The claw marks it left behind were strange: thin streaks of silvery residue etched into the stone. It's not blood. It's something deeper. My fingers brushed the lodestone hidden in my pocket. It buzzed softly, a panicked song. I knew what I was tracking wasn't just a beast. It had been touched by the silver.
The drizzle began, a seemingly innocent grey sheet, but a closer look revealed a faint, almost imperceptible film on the rocks, shimmering with an unnatural sheen.
We descended into a narrow stretch of the gorge, a claustrophobic ravine carved by time and the ruin. The walls were a twisted mess of shattered concrete and rusted metal, creating a treacherous maze of dead ends and natural alcoves. A dark, jagged cave mouth, half-hidden by a tangle of rebar, lay ahead.
Waving and pointing the direction to Barik, "It's in there, in the cave" I whispered.
Barik, his hand raised, stopped the group. "Don't go in. We'll flush it out." He had them collect dry kindling and lit a small fire. We stood near the mouth, our weapons at the ready, watching the smoke drift into the darkness.
But the hours dragged on. The two were driven by a desperate need to prove themselves, grew impatient. The fire crackled, but the beast did not stir.
"This is a waste of time," Joeren sneered, grabbing his volt-launcher. "It's probably already dead. The prize is ours."
"Joeren, no!" Barik shouted.
But it was too late. The two young hunters, fueled by recklessness, ignored him and surged into the cave mouth. They hadn't gone ten feet when the guttural roar of the beast echoed from within. It was no longer a moan of a wounded creature. It was a roar of anger.
From my position just outside the cave, a black blur erupt from the shadows, a massive glass-back whose hide was slick with blood and rain. It charged. Joeren raised his volt-launcher, but the beast's powerful claws swiped it like a twig. The bolt-launcher was sent flying, clattering into a deep pile of rubble at the far end of the gorge. Renzo scrambled to get away, but another swipe from the beast sent him flying like a rag doll. He crashed hard against a pile of rubble and lay there, leg twisted at an unnatural angle.
We reached for the two and scrambled for cover, but the beast was fast, there's no trace of weakness at all. It is now fully outside the cave, blocking our path . Its roar almost shattered my ear drums for being too close, a cascade of loose rubble to fall from the canyon walls above, sealing our only way out, I can't even hear the frantic yell by Barik to retreat. I just acted out of instinct. Then, I realized, there's no way out, we were trapped, pinned against the dead-end wall, with the feral, the beast snarling between us and safety.
Renzo was sprawled on the ground, his mouth foaming with pain. Joeren cowered behind a rock, eyes wide and white, trembling. We tried to fight; arrows, spears, all useless.
I reached for my last arrow. Barik's mouth was opened wide, shouting something I could barely hear. The beast charged again, closer, closer. My mind is muddled; distressed by the shadow of death. The end of my missions, of my life. Death is coming.
And then . . .
A whistle, soft and strange, sliced through the storm. A breath of wind that didn't belong.
Thud!
An arrow slammed into the beast's neck. Then another, sharper, faster.
Thud!
The second arrow buried deep in the delicate rock formation near the mouth of the cave, where a slow, rhythmic drip of water echoed from above.
I snapped out of my daze. A sudden clarity of thought came over me as a volcanic rock cracked open from a shot, scalding hot water gushing out nearby.
And he was there.
Eris.
High above the gorge, silver glinting faintly under his skin, Eris watched. The beast was wounded, but not half as dangerous as the boy who had just stepped from shadows.
***