The abandoned hut offered little more than four crumbling walls and a roof with more holes than thatch, but it was a sanctuary.
The air inside smelled of dust, old wood, and the faint, sweet scent of the jasmine that grew wild against one wall. Moonlight sliced through the gaps in the roof, illuminating swirling dust motes and painting eerie stripes across the packed-earth floor.
The unsettling quiet of the graveyard next door felt less threatening from behind a solid, if derelict, door.
Low found the darkest corner of the small room, away from the revealing moonbeams, and collapsed into it, sinking to the floor as if her bones were suddenly made of lead. She wrapped her new, golden werebear-fur shawl tightly around her shoulders, but it offered little comfort.
Usually radiating a restless, coiled energy, she now moved with a languidness that spoke volumes of the profound burden she carried. The weight of her transformation, the terrifying strength and the memory of the beast's rage, seemed to cling to her like a physical shroud, dampening her usual fiery spirit.
Leonotis watched her, his heart aching at her desolate posture. He opened his mouth to offer a word of comfort, a lighthearted remark, anything to pierce the suffocating gloom.
But before he could speak, Low simply raised a hand, her expression a mask of raw exhaustion and a deep-seated sadness that asked for nothing but silence.
She let out a soft, shuddering sigh that mingled with the whispers of the night, and the unspoken hung heavy between them.
He understood. Words were useless against this kind of shadow.
He found his own spot, leaving a respectful distance between them all.
The only sounds were the soft whisper of their breathing, the insistent chirp of crickets from the graveyard outside, and the mournful hoot of a distant owl, a lonely sentinel in the encroaching darkness.
They were safe, for the moment, but each was alone with their own ghosts.
Leonotis's eyes snapped open.
The quiet inside the hut had been fractured by a sound from outside, a persistent rhythmic scrape… scrape… scrape.
It was a sound that clawed at the night's silence, a deliberate, grating disturbance in the morbid tranquility of the graveyard next door.
He nudged Low's shoulder gently, then reached over and lightly shook Jacqueline's arm. Both stirred, their eyes blinking sleepily in the dim moonlight that filtered through the hut's dilapidated roof.
"Did you hear that?" Leonotis whispered, his voice low and cautious.
Low, ever alert despite her weariness, sat up instantly, her hand instinctively moving towards the bag of throwing stones at her hip.
Jacqueline, more slowly, pushed herself up, her brow furrowed with concern. "What is it?"
They moved as one, a silent trio slipping out of the hut's crumbling doorway and into the cool night air.
They crept towards the low stone wall separating them from the graveyard, slipping between the weathered tombstones.
The air grew heavier with each step, the earthy scent of damp soil intensifying, tinged now with something else… something raw and freshly turned.
The scraping sound grew louder, leading them deeper into the labyrinth of the dead.
Then they saw him.