The marshes of Riakoot lay drowned in mist, their silence broken only by the slow pull of boots through the mire. A cloaked figure trudged on, black fabric heavy with damp, one hand gripping the leash of a pitch-dark Arabian steed. The horse bent its proud head toward the feed his master scattered from a gloved hand, its breath rising pale against the frozen air.
They stopped.
A tree impossible here. A lone chinar rose from the sodden plain, its broad arms red with stubborn leaves though the land around it froze in the grip of Chillai Kalan.
At its roots slumped an old man. His chest was split wide by antlers, a cruel crown of bone that had pierced him clean through. The traveler's gaze lingered, not with fear, but with the dull gravity of one who has seen too many endings. His hand brushed the hilt of the long sword at his side.
Then a sound. A soft shuffle. His eyes caught movement: a child, half hidden behind the broad trunk.
The man knelt, voice low, almost careless in its calm. "Easy… no harm will touch you."
The girl's eyes brimmed with tears. "I… I was in my bed. At home. But when I woke, I was here. I don't know how."
The traveler's face stayed unreadable, but his thoughts stirred. A Dreyg's doing, perhaps. They lure with the remains of their last prey dragging the next soul into forgetting. Strip the name, bind the spirit. Eternal torment in a place where memory dies.
He glanced once more at the corpse, then gathered the body across the horse's back. "We go to Farbeel," he murmured, more to himself than to the child.
As he turned to leave, a crow descended, black wings cracking the fog. It perched upon the dead man's neck and thrust its beak into the hollow where an eye once was. With a wet tear, it plucked the orb free and dropped it to the earth.
Where it struck the frozen soil, a flower blossomed. Luminous. Out of season. A bloom of impossible beauty glowing against the death shrouded marsh.
The traveler's eyes narrowed.
In Chillai Kalan, nothing was meant to grow.
The girl rode astride the black steed, her small hands tangled in the coarse mane. The traveler walked beside, cloak brushing the snow. He dragged the reins gently, boots crunching as they left the marsh behind.
The change was stark. In the marshes, the earth lay bare mud, water, frost, but no snow. Yet here, not a mile ahead, the world turned white. Snow swallowed the road in drifts two feet deep. Each step was slower, heavier. The horse's breath smoked like incense in the air.
The girl broke the silence first.
"Why was there no snow in the marsh?"
The man shrugged beneath his cloak. "Some places forget the season. Or perhaps the season forgets them."
She frowned. "That doesn't make sense."
"Not much does, if you've seen enough winters," he said, feeding the stallion another fistful of grain as they walked.
For a while, there was only the sound of hooves sinking into snow. Then the girl's voice again, timid but insistent:
"Will we be safe in Farbeel?"
His eyes stayed on the road, but his tone softened. "Safer than under a chinar in the middle of a marsh."
The girl pulled the horse's mane tighter. "The man… with the horns… do you think he was from Farbeel?"
"Perhaps," the traveler said. "Perhaps not. But if he had a name, we'll return it to his people. That is enough."
The girl studied him quietly, as though weighing his words. "Do you have a name?"
The traveler's boots slowed. His face stayed shadowed beneath the hood, but his silence lingered longer than it should have. Finally, he answered:
"I had one."
The girl tilted her head. "And now?"
He gave a faint, almost careless smile. "Now I have a horse. And a child who asks too many questions."
She pouted, but he heard the small laugh that followed, quick and nervous.
The snow deepened, the path narrowing between frozen hedges and silent fields. Above, the sky was heavy with more storm. The faint outline of Farbeel's wooden roofs began to take shape through the white veil.
The walls of Farbeel were little more than logs bound with ice, their roofs bowed beneath the weight of snow. Smoke curled from a few chimneys, but the gates stood closed, flanked by men with spears and frost cracked shields.
"Halt!" one of them called, his voice rough with the cold. "No entry."
The traveler stopped, the girl shifting uneasily on the horse's back. He lifted his hand, calm as the mist around them.
"I bring a child and a body. Both need shelter."
The guards exchanged wary glances. The elder of the two spat into the snow. "You'll turn back. Farbeel takes no strays. Not now. Not after what's been stalking the marshes."
The traveler dragged the horse a step closer, enough for them to see the stiff form slumped across the saddle the old man, antlers still piercing his chest. One guard swore under his breath and made a sign against evil.
"This one died beneath a chinar in Riakoot," the traveler said. "If he had kin here, they'll want to know. If not, you'll want to know what killed him."
The elder's grip tightened on his spear. "And why should we believe you're not the one who did it? Black cloak, strange horse… and you walk with a child that looks half stolen."
The girl's voice cracked through the cold. "I'm not stolen! I don't even know how I came there!" Her breath rose fast and trembling.
The traveler laid a steady hand on the horse's neck, his tone as flat as falling snow.
"If I wanted blood, I would not drag a corpse to your gate. Open it, before your roofs share his fate."
For a moment, there was only silence, broken by the groan of timbers in the wind. Then another voice rose from the wall above a woman's voice, stern but weary.
"Let them in."
The guards hesitated, then pushed the gates apart just enough to allow man, horse, and child through. As the traveler led them beneath the wooden arch, the woman's eyes followed from above. Dark eyes that seemed to measure more than just his words.
Farbeel was not a place of welcome. It was a place on edge, braced for something it did not understand.
The gates groaned shut behind them, sealing out the white storm. Inside, Farbeel's lanes were little more than trenches carved into drifts of snow. Roofs sagged under weight, smoke curled low and gray, and the air carried the scent of frozen dung and pine. The traveler led the horse through the narrow way, the dead man's body stiff across its back. Villagers watched from behind shutters, their faces pale shapes in the dim glow of oil lamps.
The woman who had spoken from the wall walked ahead, her shawl trailing in the snow. She was old, her hair bound in silver plaits, her frame slight. Yet her steps were steady, her back unbent. She did not speak as she guided them, nor did she spare the corpse slumped behind the saddle more than a single glance.
The girl whispered from atop the horse. "Is that… his wife?"
The traveler gave no answer. His eyes remained fixed on the woman, measuring the quiet in her every gesture. No grief clung to her, no cry of mourning had left her lips. That silence weighed heavier than any wail.
They reached a low house at the edge of the square. Its windows were dark, save for the flicker of a hearth inside. The woman pushed the door open with a hand that trembled only from the cold. "Bring him in," she said softly.
The traveler lowered the corpse from the saddle, carrying it into the warmth. The fire cracked, shadows leapt along the earthen walls, and the smell of smoke clung to the air. He laid the body on a woven mat by the wall. Still, the widow gave no lament. Instead, she spread a blanket over the chest with its cruel wound, as though covering nothing more than a sleeping guest.
Only then did she turn her eyes to the girl. They were gentle, surprisingly so, though her face bore years carved deep by winters. "Child," she asked, "what is your name?"
The girl straightened on the bench, her voice small but sure. "Zooni."
The woman's gaze shifted to the traveler. "And yours?"
The fire popped in the silence. He opened his mouth, but nothing came. A name should have risen like breath but there was only absence, an empty space where memory should live.
His hand curled at his side. His eyes dropped to the fire. "I… do not know."
The widow studied him for a long moment, her expression unreadable. Then, with the same unflinching calm she had shown at the gates, she said only: "Then you may both stay. For now."
The traveler inclined his head, though his thoughts burned darker than the fire. A widow with no tears, no trembling voice, no grief at the antlers that had pierced her husband. Only a strange, quiet acceptance.
And that was reason enough for suspicion.
The fire burned low in the widow's hearth. Shadows trembled against the earthen walls as the storm pressed harder outside, its wind rattling the shutters like restless fingers.
The traveler lay near the door, cloak pulled around him, his sword within reach. The girl, Zooni, slept curled on a woven cot, her breaths soft, almost lost in the crackle of embers. The widow moved quietly about the room, tending to the body of her husband. She lit no candles, spoke no prayers only sat beside him, stroking the blanket that covered the antler wound as though smoothing wrinkles from a child's bed.
At last she withdrew into her own corner, pulling a shawl around her shoulders. Silence thickened.
But the traveler did not sleep. Not at first. He lay listening to the crackle of wood, the rise and fall of Zooni's breath, the whisper of the wind. Then, slowly, another sound began to thread itself into the night.
A scratching.
Soft, deliberate. Not on the walls, but beneath them, as though the earth itself clawed upward.
The horse outside whinnied, hooves thudding against the frozen ground. Zooni stirred, murmuring in her sleep. The traveler's hand closed on his sword hilt, but when he rose to his feet, the sound stopped.
He opened the shutter. Only the storm waited outside. Snow, dark sky, nothing more.
Turning back, he froze.
The corpse was no longer where he had laid it. The mat lay empty, the blanket neatly folded atop it. Across the room, the widow sat in her corner, eyes open, watching him.
"You should rest," she whispered.
He blinked. And the body was back. Wrapped in its blanket, just as before.
The scratching did not return. The fire died lower. Finally, exhaustion claimed him, pulling him into a sleep as heavy as stone.
Morning
When he woke, the fire was ash. Zooni yawned on her cot, rubbing her eyes. The widow poured hot water into a clay bowl, her shawl wrapped tight.
The traveler's mind snagged on something, a sense of wrongness, but it slipped like water through his fingers. He glanced at the corpse it lay just where he had placed it. Folded blanket, quiet stillness.
Had it moved? Had there been scratching? He could not be sure.
Zooni's voice broke his thought. "Will we see the elders today?"
He nodded, slow. His hand brushed the sword at his hip, though he could not say why. Some piece of the night had followed him into the morning yet it was already fading, like a dream half remembered.
The morning in Farbeel broke gray and muted, as though the snow itself swallowed sound. Our cloaked traveler woke with the dull ache of restless sleep, a memory gnawing at the edges of his mind. Something had stirred the house in the deep hours of night he remembered now, faintly. A floorboard creaked, a shadow bent low by the hearth. Hair… or something like hair, dragging across the floor. He had dismissed it then as dream, and even now his mind urged him to let it fade.
The widow was already awake, stoking a weak fire. Her face, lined by years, showed no grief, no redness in her eyes. Her movements were too even, too calm for a woman who had lost her husband.
"The snow will keep you here a while," she said, not looking up. "Eat. Then think of leaving."
It was then he saw Zooni by the window. Small and slight, she sat hugging her knees, her dark hair falling over her face. The light painted her in pale silver, almost fragile. She should have looked eerie, staring at the crow outside with those unblinking eyes, but instead there was something wounded in her stillness like a child too tired to cry anymore.
"Zooni," the traveler said softly, crouching at her side, "how did you sleep?"
She turned to him slowly, her lips parting into a small, unsure smile.
"I dreamed of antlers," she whispered. "They grew from the roof and scraped the sky. And the roof bled."
The words should have chilled him and they did yet her voice was so gentle, so innocent, it sounded like a frightened child recounting a nightmare. He found himself brushing a strand of hair from her face. Her skin was ice cold, colder than the air itself, and though his instincts warned him, she only giggled and pulled her cloak tighter, like she was embarrassed at being touched.
When he stepped outside to tend the horse, he found the snow disturbed melted patches, strange and circular, as though something had pressed itself into the earth with heat. A tuft of coarse black hair clung to the wood. His gut twisted.
And yet, when he returned, Zooni was humming quietly, tearing bread into neat little pieces and setting them in a circle on the floor.
"It's a game," she explained brightly when he asked. "If you finish the circle, nothing can leave."
Her smile was crooked, gap toothed, endearing in its childish imperfection. Whatever unease he felt in the stable faltered. How could this small, broken thing mean harm?
The widow watched her warily, lips pressed thin. Later, when Zooni stepped outside, she whispered:
"She never told me her name before last night. Children don't forget their names."
The traveler said nothing. He should have agreed, should have seen it as a sign. But when Zooni came running back in, cheeks flushed red from the cold, breath misting in the air, she looked every inch the orphan she claimed to be.
She laughed at something simple at the horse sneezing snow into the air and for a moment, the house felt lighter. Even the widow softened, placing a shawl over her small shoulders.
The traveler watched her, his doubts gnawing against something stubborn in his chest. The signs were there the dream, the cold skin, the too knowing eyes. Yet they dimmed before the simple weight of her smile.
She was only a child. Wasn't she?
The village gathered at the edge of the marsh, where snow bent the grass into glassy blades and the earth froze stubborn against the spade. The traveler carried the weight of the dead man across his shoulders, the antlers clattering softly like brittle wood. The widow followed, her shawl tight around her frame, her face unreadable.
The villagers had come too, muttering to each other, their breath forming clouds in the air.
"Another killing," one man whispered. "How many more before Farbeel is emptied?"
"He was a good man," another said. "Always helped at harvest. No debt on his soul."
They dug, the shovels groaning against the frost. The work was slow, and grief made it slower. At last, the hollow was carved, shallow but deep enough to take the body.
The widow stepped forward. She did not cry. Her hands folded together as if she were simply reciting from memory.
"He was my husband. A quiet man. He loved this land, even when it gave him nothing but cold. He gave me a roof, a hearth, and years that passed too quickly. Now he returns to the soil he worked with his hands. May the snow cover him gentle."
Her voice did not falter, and her eyes stayed dry. Some villagers looked at her askance, whispering at her calmness, but no one spoke aloud.
Then another stepped forward a broad-shouldered man with streaks of gray in his beard.
"He was my friend since boyhood," he said, gripping the shovel like a staff. "We trapped birds together, we fought together when Farbeel needed defending. We grew apart, as men do, but still… he remembered me when I passed his door. Always a nod. Always a word. I thought there would be more time."
His voice cracked, and he spat into the snow, ashamed of it.
And then came a woman, her steps halting as if each took years from her. She was wrapped in a heavy cloak, her hair white as the snow around her.
The widow's eyes flickered when she saw her.
The woman spoke, and her voice was brittle with distance:
"I am his sister. We have not spoken in twenty years. The last words we shared were cruel I will not repeat them. I thought… I thought there would be another day, that I could find him when I wished. Now there is no such day. I buried him long ago in my heart, but to bury him here, in this ground, is heavier still."
Her hands shook as she reached for a handful of snow and let it fall onto the body.
The traveler stood apart, silent, watching the ritual unfold. He felt the weight of their grief in its different shapes: the widow's quiet mask, the friend's breaking voice, the sister's regret. All different faces of the same loss.
It was then he remembered the flower. The strange, glowing bloom that had sprouted from the corpse when the crow had taken the man's eye. He retrieved it, its faint light seeming out of place in the pallid morning.
He plucked the petals one by one, scattering them across the grave. They glowed as they fell, landing on the snow with faint warmth, like embers falling into ash.
And then Zooni collapsed.
Her small frame crumpled into the whiteness, as if her strings had been cut. Gasps rose from the villagers. The widow cried out, and the traveler dropped to his knees, rolling the child onto her back. Her skin was pale as carved bone, her lips quivering faintly as if trying to form words.
"Zooni!" he called, his voice sharp with fear. "Zooni, wake."
But her eyes remained closed. Her chest rose and fell, shallow, barely there.
"She is cursed," hissed the sister of the dead man, clutching her cloak. "See how she falls with the flower! It has tied her to his death."
"Or she is ill," the traveler snapped back, though his own heart stuttered with doubt.
He gathered her up in his arms. She was feather light, limp, her head lolling against his chest. He could feel the faintest heartbeat fragile, fading.
The villagers murmured uneasily, crossing themselves, muttering prayers. Some stepped back, as if fearing contagion.
The widow only stood still, her eyes narrowing on the girl, lips pressed in a line. But she said nothing.
The traveler ignored them all. He carried Zooni back through the snow, every step heavier than the last. When they reached the widow's house, he laid her gently upon the straw bed. The firelight flickered over her face, making her look soft, innocent, defenseless.
The widow muttered prayers in the corner, her back half-turned. The traveler sat by the girl's side, brushing a strand of hair from her brow.
She looked like a child asleep, nothing more. Too small, too lost, too fragile.
He should have watched over her. He should have let his doubts sharpen into certainty. But exhaustion pressed him down, heavy as stone. His eyes closed despite himself.
She is only a child, he thought.
And sleep claimed him.
The house was silent beneath a blanket of snow. The traveler slept beside Zooni, exhausted, his dreams heavy with the day's grief. The widow had gone to her corner, muttering prayers, her face tight with unease.
Then came a faint rustle. At first, he thought it was a dream. A shadow flickered across the room, smooth and fluid, unlike any human movement.
He sat up, heart hammering. Zooni was gone.
Slowly, the traveler scanned the room. The corner where the widow slept was dark, almost peaceful but something was wrong. A faint ripple of movement.
And then he saw her: Zooni, no longer the small, helpless child he had grown to protect, her limbs bending in ways that seemed impossible, hair writhing like living tendrils, her eyes faintly glowing black. She leaned over the widow's throat, teeth glinting in the firelight.
The shock rooted him to the spot. His breath caught. His mind screamed, No… she's a child! She can't
But the crimson spreading across the widow's collar silenced doubt.
Instinct overrode horror. He lunged, grabbing at her, but she vanished a blink, a shimmer and reappeared across the room. Her claw slashed down, grazing his arm, sending fire of pain up his shoulder. He staggered back, blood running, lungs screaming.
"Zooni!" he shouted, though his voice wavered. No… this isn't real… she's a child…
The Brukayi hissed, a sound that was half childlike giggle, half demonic roar. Every movement was graceful and impossible, limbs extending unnaturally, tentacle hair snapping like whips.
Even as he attacked, he could not fully shed the image of the child he had fed, protected, and comforted. Every strike he threw, every dodge he executed, carried guilt and disbelief. Could he really fight her? Could he destroy what he had believed innocent?
She teleported, vanishing from sight, then reappearing behind him. His fist collided with nothing but air, and her claw caught his ribs. He gasped, pain lancing through him, but he swung again, connecting with her knee feeling a wet, sickening snap. She shrieked, staggering but not falling.
The firelight cast long shadows as they crashed through the room. Furniture shattered under their feet. He grabbed a chair leg and struck at her shoulder, her tentacles snapping back. She twisted in midair, teleporting again, claws raking across his legs. Blood soaked his pants, warm against the cold of the snow drifting in through broken shutters.
Each strike he landed, each bone he broke, came at the cost of injury: a snapped finger, cracked ribs, bruises blooming across his body. His heart thudded painfully, but he refused to yield.
Finally, he lunged, catching her mid tentacle, yanking her down. She shrieked, twisting violently, tentacles flailing. He struck her in the base of the skull repeatedly, feeling the shock of bone against bone, flesh against flesh. She countered, claws tearing into his chest and arms, each movement a test of endurance and will.
She's a child… she's my child… but she's not…
Every thought of her innocence clashed violently with the raw horror of what she had done. His arms shook, bleeding, muscles screaming, yet he pressed on.
Seeing an opening, he twisted her head sharply, fingers working like steel levers. Her upper skull cracked with a hollow, echoing snap. Tentacles writhed in one final frenzy, claws flexing, then all went still.
He collapsed to the floor, gasping. His body was battered, every limb bruised or broken, blood soaking his clothes. The room was silent but for the crackle of the fire.
Aftermath and Emotional Fallout
Even in death, a faint whisper echoed in the room:
"Why… do you not understand? I only wanted…"
His hands trembled as he looked at her monstrous form. She had been a child, a predator, and something in between a twisted innocence trapped in a powerful, terrible body.
"Zooni…" he whispered. "I… I should have seen it. I should have known…"
The firelight flickered over her massive, still form. Tentacles slack, claws curled. Her eyes, once black, were now dim, yet he could almost see the childlike flicker he had loved.
Outside, the snow fell silently. Inside, the weight of betrayal, grief, and horror pressed on him, as though the Chillai Kalan itself had found its way into his chest.
He closed his eyes, exhausted, broken, yet alive. And for the first time, he realized: the world of Kasheer was far darker than he had imagined.