Darius woke to the sound of frantic knocking. It rattled the shutters, pulling him from a dreamless sleep into a jolt of cold dread. For a moment, he thought it might have been the whispers again, leaking into his rest. But no — this was real, sharp, urgent.
His father's footsteps pounded across the wooden floor downstairs, followed by the creak of the door and a woman's voice, thin with panic.
"Something's taken them!"
Darius sat up, heart hammering. Elara stirred beside him, rubbing her eyes. "What's happening?" she whispered, her voice small in the gloom.
He didn't answer, only pulled on his tunic and hurried down the ladder. The room below was lit only by the hearth's fading embers, but the urgency in the air was brighter than any flame.
Widow Maren stood in the doorway, her gray hair wild, her nightcloak clutched around her thin shoulders. Her face was blotched with tears.
"My goats," she cried. "Every one of them. Gone!"
His mother gasped softly. His father's expression did not change, though his jaw tightened as he said, "Slowly now. Tell me."
Maren wrung her hands, her knuckles pale. "I woke just before dawn, as I always do, to milk them. The pen was broken — the gate splintered clean through. And tracks, big as my hands, leading toward the forest." Her voice cracked. "No wolf makes prints like that."
Silence fell. Even the hearth seemed to hold its breath.
Darius' stomach knotted. He remembered his father's words the day before, about the forest being too quiet. He remembered the shadowy eyes he thought he'd seen beyond the candles' glow.
His father finally spoke. "Fetch Bram," he said, his voice low. "And wake the elder."
By the time the sun lifted above the trees, the whole village was gathered near Maren's ruined pen. Darius stood among them, his hands shoved deep in his pockets, wishing he could disappear into the crowd. The broken gate lay twisted, the wood split as though some giant hand had torn it apart. Straw littered the ground, stained with dark smears that made his stomach turn.
The tracks were the worst. Huge, clawed impressions sank deep into the earth, far too large for any wolf or bear Darius had ever heard of. They led straight into the tree line, swallowed by shadow.
Murmurs rippled through the villagers.
"Not natural…"
"Cursed woods…"
"It's begun again."
Again. The word clung to Darius' thoughts like burrs.
Elder Harven arrived at last, leaning heavily on his cane. His beard was white and full, his back bent with years, but his eyes were sharp, missing nothing as they swept across the scene. He knelt slowly, tracing one gnarled finger along the edge of a print. His mouth tightened.
"This is no wolf," he said.
The murmurs grew louder, fear threading every voice. Someone asked, "What do we do?"
Harven straightened with effort, but his voice carried, firm despite his age. "We do what we have always done. We stay together. We do not wander the woods. And we remember the old prayers."
Prayers. Darius glanced at his father, whose face gave nothing away. But he saw his mother clutch Elara closer, as if words alone could not keep shadows at bay.
The villagers dispersed reluctantly, each step heavy with unease. But the whispers did not stop. Darius heard them all afternoon as he helped repair the pen, their voices drifting like gnats.
"They'll come for more."
"The forest is waking."
"We should leave Ashwood."
Leave. The thought struck him harder than it should have. Ashwood was his world — its fields, its river, the crooked roofs, the smell of bread at the square. To imagine it empty felt wrong, like trying to picture the sky without stars.
As evening fell, his father set down his hammer and straightened. "That's enough," he said. "We'll finish tomorrow."
Darius nodded, though his muscles still trembled with the need to work, to fix, to do something. Anything to banish the image of those tracks.
That night, supper was quiet. The stew was hot and filling, but Darius barely tasted it. Elara picked at her bread, her usual chatter stilled, though she leaned against their mother's arm as if the contact was enough to keep fear at bay.
When the dishes were cleared, Darius lingered by the window, staring out at the dark fringe of the forest. He tried to tell himself it was only goats. That wild beasts roamed freely, and there was nothing unusual about a predator stealing livestock.
But the prints would not leave his mind. Nor the word again.
As the house settled into silence, his father's voice came low, almost too soft to hear. "Stay inside after dusk, Darius. No wandering."
Darius turned. His father sat by the hearth, the fire painting his lined face in shades of red and gold. His eyes met Darius', steady and unblinking. "Promise me."
"I promise," Darius said, though the words scraped against his throat.
Later, in the loft, Elara whispered in the dark. "Do you think the forest is angry?"
He wanted to laugh, to call it childish. But the question struck too close to the one he had been asking himself all day.
"I don't know," he admitted.
Elara was quiet for a long moment, then murmured, "I heard them too, you know. The whispers. Last night."
Darius' breath caught.
She rolled over, her small back curling against him. "They sounded like… like someone calling my name."
Darius lay awake long after her breathing evened into sleep. He stared at the slanted beams above, his chest tight, ears straining for sounds beyond the walls.
The night was thick with the ordinary chorus of frogs and crickets. But beneath it — faint, uncertain, like a sigh carried on the wind — he thought he heard it again.
His name.
"Darius…"
The sound slid along his spine like ice.
He shut his eyes tight, fists clenched against the blanket, and tried to tell himself it was only the wind.
But he did not sleep.