The slab had become a trap. Rain gnawed at the soil, loosening its grip until the stone hung like a cantilever over the abyss. Each heartbeat tilted it further. Barik's group knew: if they stayed, the slab would break and take them with it. They could not retreat. They could not wait. They could only go forward and fight.
Then, from the storm, a horn blew.
A clear, strong note. Not Barik's cracked call, but its twin—its echo.
Thalen, his father's horn. He came.
***
The older hunter's eyes snapped to the hilltop through sheets of rain. He saw the burning tree sputtering against the dark, saw men huddled against the slab, and there, his son. Bloodied, pale, but standing.
Thalen's heart clenched, and he raised again his own horn. He blew with a deep, rolling call that cut through the storm like steel; giving hope as if telling his son that father was here. They will fight as one!
The wolves faltered at the sound, ears twitching, hackles raised. But the pause lasted only a heartbeat. Then they surged again, faster now, driven by their prey's desperation.
"Forward!" Thalen roared. His voice was nearly lost in the gale, but his men heard. They pressed through mud that clutched their boots like chains, lanterns swinging wildly, wolves bursting from the storm to meet them.
A gray shape lunged—teeth sank into a hunter's forearm. Thalen struck, his spear plunging deep, twisting free in a spray of blood and rain.
Another wolf slammed into him, driving him back into the muck. He rose, roared, cut it down with his ax. His men screamed and scattered, then closed ranks again, pulling toward him.
The clearing erupted into chaos.
Barik's group were still holding; a ragged ring of blood and steel on the slab's trembling edge. Wolves tore at their flanks, testing, retreating, lunging again.
The Alpha was waiting, a shadow of scar and sinew, its eyes locked first on Dara, then on Thalen. It prowled just beyond the still-burning branches of tree, unwilling to die just like the people on the hilltop.
Heaven was helping them; the rain stopped.
"Father!" Barik bellowed across the storm.
"They're coming! We're saved" Joeren gasped, his tears flowing like rain, hope cracking through his fear.
But Barik didn't look to the rescuing party. His gaze stayed locked on the Alpha. Survival demanded no distractions.
Shapes pushed through the storm; men this time, not wolves. Relief flared, then snapped back into the iron weight of command.
"Hold the line!" Spear in one hand and ax in another, Barik roared, splitting a wolf's jaw with his ax. Blood hissed into steam.
Across the way, Thalen shouted the same: "Hold the line!" He knew a reckless charge would scatter his exhausted band into the jaws of death. Inch by inch, he moved them as one.
"Arrows!" he barked.
SWOOSH—SWOOSH—SWOOSH.
A ragged volley split the storm. Some arrows struck true, others vanished into rain and fur, but the wolves staggered. It was enough. Wolves flinched back, the pack scattering just long enough for Thalen's band to break through.
Steel clashed against fangs. Wolves wheeled in confusion; half turning on Thalen's men, half pressing harder against Barik's failing line.
The clearing became a storm of its own. Torchlight swung madly. Breath steamed. Blood hissed into mud.
His men screamed, regrouped, hacked themselves free of snapping jaws. They did not stop—if they faltered, the pack would drown them. They drove forward, cutting the flank, steel flashing against rain-slick fur.
The Alpha howled. A long, splitting note of command. The pack answered, fanning out, dividing. One half pressed on Thalen's weary warband, the other hammered Barik's defenders.
The two groups were close enough to hear each other's ragged breaths, to glimpse torchlight across the rain; but wolves kept them apart.
On the slab, Dara loosed arrow after arrow. She did not miss. Three wolves fell cleanly, and Joeren, breathless, handed her the rest of his quiver. "Use mine!," he gasped, gripping his short knife as his last defense.
Dara emptied every shaft, each shot deliberate, precise. Wolves dropped snarling, thrashing in the mud, but her quiver was bare before the pack even slowed. She had always known this moment would come.
She drew her machete, a standard arms for a tracker like her. The blade caught a glint of lightning, then the first wolf met her steel. She moved with brutal grace, strikes honed from years of practice in silence. She had never shown them this side of herself. The tracker who shadowed trails fought now like a vanguard meant for blood.
Barik saw it, even through the chaos. Wounded though she was, she cut through the storm itself. The others noticed too; Joeren's awe, Cugat's disbelief, his wide-eyed stare as he raised the trembling spear. For a heartbeat, they almost believed she alone might carry them through.
But wounds do not vanish. Numbers do not lie.
Each of them bled. Each stumble slowed them. Each step closer to the ridge's edge sapped their strength. They could neither advance nor retreat, only stand locked in this deadly line, until the stone beneath gave way.
And on the far side, Thalen's group fought their own death-match.
They had come hard and fast, loyalty driving them through exhaustion. Half of them were scarcely grown, eyes wide with fear, their strikes too wild to pierce hide or bone. The other half: the veterans of Thalen's original warband, ragged their weapons like millstones, every motion dulled by the ache of their earlier mission.
Yet not one had turned back. They fought because Thalen fought, because their bond to him mattered more than their lives.
But the Alpha was cunning. It divided its pack, pressing its bodyguards between Thalen's men and Barik's desperate line. The two groups were close enough to hear each other's ragged breaths, to glimpse one another through the sheets of rain; but the wolves would not let them close ranks.
They were near, and yet too far, a cruel measure that gnawed at both father and son.
The pack broke into chaos. Men shouted, wolves shrieked, torchlight swayed madly in the rain. Flickers of lightning revealed the group of wolves in the shadows. Somewhere in that blur, Barik's eyes found his father, watched in horror. Three wolves against one man. His father staggered, slammed aside, rose again, his spear shaft shattering against a jaw.
He roared, his spear broken, he used his ax carving down through fur and flesh, but each elite wolf killed cost him dearly. For every wolf he struck down, two more pressed in. His men bled out in the mud, still forcing themselves forward. Yet the more they strain , the more the Alpha herded them back, grinding them against the storm and their own fatigue.
One of Alpha's guard burst from the dark; gray and slick, muzzle black with blood.
Spear low, Thalen lunged, felt the jolt of impact as iron met ribs. The beast twisted, shrieked, and tumbled into the mud, snapping the shaft in two.
On the hilltop, Dara's blade slowed. Too tired and her arms were already numb. Joeren's knife arm shook. Cugat stumbled, his spear slipping from numb fingers. Every heartbeat stretched the truth tighter: they could not hold.
But Barik knew. The slab was breaking, the wolves were splitting their prey, and if they waited any longer, the stone would give way and they would all be swallowed.
For Cugat, it's better to fall in battle than in the pit.
Barik commanded Dara to move behind him, and to the rest of his group, he shouted, "Forward!"
He leapt from the slab with a cry, Joeren and two others stumbling after him. Their wounds screamed, their steps faltered, but they threw themselves into the melee at Thalen's side.
The brief chaos was deadly. Rian went down with a scream, two wolves pinning him in the mud. Barik plunged in, boots sinking deep, yanking the man free by the collar while his knife rose and fell in brutal arcs.
Barik reached his father in the clash. Their eyes met for an instant, brief and blazing. Father and son fought shoulder to shoulder, spears thrusting, blades flashing. Yet both knew; they were losing.
Father and son both felt this would be their last battle. At least, not alone, but together.
The storm drowned the ridge in fury, and despair settled over both bands. It was only a matter of time, moments breaths before the slab fell or the Alpha broke them. They already lost hope of staying alive.
The pack pressed harder. Hunters fell to their knees. The storm roared.
And then . . .
The world changed.
A crack tore the sky. No, the ground. Not thunder. Not lightning. Something colder.
A soundless crack rippled through the air, and a blinding web of cold, silvery-blue light spread across the ground. It was not from the lightning from the sky. It spread from the ground, from a source they could not see.
The light didn't strike like lightning. It seeped, wove, threaded into the ground, into their bones. reinforcing them, giving them strength. Barik felt it in his veins, an echo of something older, deeper.
His father stiffened, staring wide-eyed.
Then, a web that cracked open earth and stone. It spread like veins across the hill, searing through the mud, shimmering across the slab beneath the hunters' boots. They staggered back, covering their eyes, blinking against the brilliance, but it seemed to single out the wolves.
The beasts whimpered, their eyes rolling back in terror.
The wolves screamed in pain. Their bodies twisted in the light as though it burned them from within. One by one they faltered; their eyes wide with terror.
The hunters braced for death, but none of the silver arcs touched them. It coursed through the wolves, striking them as though it chose them alone.
Wolves were rolling in pain while men were standing still and wary, afraid to move. Likewise, they were confused and almost blinded.
Again, another flash of silver. It spread across the air like a spiderweb of pale fire, veins of light weaving through rain and dark, snaring every breath. The storm itself seemed to draw back.
This time, the Alpha did not hesitate anymore. It lifted its head. Its howl rolled long and low, a sound of fury, fear, and command. One by one, the wolves turned, abandoning prey, abandoning blood. They slipped into the storm, vanishing as swiftly as they had come.
And then there was silence.
The silver faded, leaving only the rain. The hunters stood panting in the mud, too broken to cheer, too shaken to speak.
Barik's chest heaved. He did not understand what he had seen. No one did.
Yet as his father lowered his ax, blood dripping, eyes wide with the same fear as his son's, Barik thought: perhaps, just perhaps. He knew who might have sent the light.
* * *