When Xeno returned from the river, silence met him where laughter should have been.
The air felt wrong. It was still clean, carrying the deep, wet scent of the First River. But the camp was quiet. The sounds of pestles pounding and children laughing were gone. Snuffed out. Beneath the sweet smell of Heart-Leaf Berries hung a strange, metallic bitterness. Like blood and burned earth.
For Xeno, life was a constant lesson in being careful.
At fourteen, he was already as big as a full-grown hunter. He was all heavy bone and thick muscle, while the rest of his tribe were built for speed and grace. He wasn't a monster, just a boy in a man's body—a body that didn't know its own strength.
Slow. Careful. Don't break it. The thought was a tired chant in his head. He knew his own power was a danger here.
He focused on the net in his hands. His father, Othniel, had taught him to mend its delicate fibers. One wrong move, one twitch of his full strength, and he could tear it to pieces.
"Easy, lad. Trust the current. Feel the resistance, not the fight."
Othniel stood beside him. Where Xeno was all clumsy, raw power, his father was pure control. He never wasted a motion. Together, they pulled the net onto the bank. Silver-scaled River Darts flapped inside.
A small smile touched Othniel's lips. "Good haul."
A flicker of pride warmed Xeno's chest. He'd helped. He hadn't broken anything.
"The river is generous today," Xeno said, his voice softer than his frame suggested.
"Patience provides," Othniel replied, his eyes scanning the tree line like they always did. A habit Xeno never understood. "The loud ones chase glory. The quiet ones survive."
Xeno nodded. He understood that much.
He shifted the net, lifting the heavy knot with one hand. It was easy. Too easy for a boy.
He caught his father watching him. In Othniel's eyes, a dark thought flickered. It wasn't pride. It was something heavier, like dread. The look was gone in a second. Othniel turned away, muttering words Xeno barely caught.
"...early. Just like her."
Before Xeno could ask what he meant, Othniel froze. His body went stiff. His eyes locked on the Sentinel Trees marking the camp.
A Shadow Hawk cried above. But beneath it, nothing. No voices. No life. The silence was a weight.
Xeno's heart hammered. Grandmother Mana? Kellen? A cold fear gripped him.
The air had changed. The fresh river scent was gone, replaced by the iron stink of blood and the ugly smell of smoke.
Othniel dropped into a crouch. "Follow. Quietly. Stay in my shadow."
They moved like ghosts. Othniel read the silence like tracks, his eyes seeing a story of horror Xeno couldn't. Xeno's mind raced. This isn't quiet. This is empty.
At the final rise, the truth hit him like a punch. His stomach twisted. His legs went weak.
The camp was gone. Not abandoned. Erased.
No fires. No voices. Only blood and smoke.
The mighty Sentinel Trees were shattered. Splintered. Even the Iron Wood—the toughest timber, wood that took days to carve—was crushed to dust. The power it would take to do that... it was impossible. No person from any nearby tribe could have done this.
This was something else. Something brutal and efficient.
Massive obsidian mauls.
This was no raid. This was an execution.
Othniel stood still, his face a mask of stone. But his eyes were alive, mapping the attack. Three directions at once. Only the river had saved them. He saw the deep grooves in the earth, the proof of a single, merciless purpose.
Xeno's eyes darted, searching for a face, a sign. Grandmother Mana? Kellen? He saw only a broken piece of an Iron Wood maul—a weapon their strongest hunters could barely lift, now just splinters.
Othniel walked to a patch of scorched earth. He didn't look at the bodies. He bent down and picked up a smooth, polished river stone—a child's toy. He closed his fist around it. For one single moment, his rigid face cracked with a grief so deep it hurt to see. Then it was gone, sealed away behind a wall harder than stone.
"The Skull Eaters," Othniel rasped, the name sounding like a wound. "From the east. A tide of them. They have mauls that shatter bone and tree. They don't take land. They turn it into a graveyard. They leave no one behind. No voices. Just... silence."
He swallowed hard. "We are finished here. We run. Now. South, into the empty lands."
He grabbed Xeno's arm, his grip firm and final, and pulled him into a run.
They ran with the brutal rhythm of survival. Othniel set the pace, his lungs burning. But Xeno was the engine. His dense body was a machine of endurance. What would exhaust others in minutes was, for him, just moving. The "Great Stone" was no longer clumsy. He was a force, driving them forward.
In under two hours, the green grass ended. They entered the Scarred Zone, where the earth was red-brown and jagged shale cracked under their feet.
The air was sharp and dry.
My lungs are strong. I can keep going. I can help him. Pushing through the fear, a strange pride rose in Xeno. This strength, this stamina—was this why his father had always watched him so closely?
"Slow now," Othniel gasped, his face slick with sweat.
He pointed to a narrow gap between giant rocks. "They won't follow us into poison ground. It will buy us time. Distance."
They plunged into the hostile land. Thorns clawed at their hides. The air thickened with chalky dust and the sickly-sweet smell of the Wanderer's Bulb.
The thorns closed above them, glowing a faint red in the dying sun like veins of fire. In that deadly beauty, Xeno felt a dread colder than the land itself.
A stone rolled where no wind stirred. Brush shifted, then stilled.
The silence was alive.