Evening settles over the slopes of Mount Eryndor. The campsite glows with torches and paper lanterns that sway like slow stars. AIDEON, nineteen, tends the fire while Cassiel and Anastasia chase one another through the grass. Their parents, Phil and Mary, speak with the other families—faces lit gold by the flames, laughter echoing.
The night feels eternal; no one notices how quiet the forest has become. AIDEON glances at the treeline once—just a movement between the trunks—and dismisses it. The chapter ends with Cassiel asking, "Do bears climb mountains this high?"
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Children gather as an old man tells ghost stories about the Hollow Kings who once ruled beneath the mountain. The tale is silly, yet AIDEON's mother looks uneasy; her grandmother used to whisper the same names. Cassiel sits wide-eyed, holding AIDEON's sleeve.
When the story ends, sparks float up like dying souls. Phil jokes that ghosts wouldn't dare face his axe. The laughter comes forced now. The wind shifts, carrying a low hum that doesn't belong to any insect or bird. AIDEON thinks he hears drums under the earth.
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The camp sleeps. Only the fires crackle and the river murmurs. Cassiel wakes to the crunch of snow-softened leaves and the faint clink of metal. Through the tent flap he sees shadow shapes moving—too tall, too thin to be men.
He wakes AIDEON. The older brother listens, hears nothing, comforts him. Their mother murmurs from another tent, telling them to sleep. A distant howl rolls down the valley—deep, wet, wrong. Cassiel whispers, "That's not a bear." AIDEON tells himself it is.
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Men gather near the fire, armed with torches. Phil joins them. He tells Mary to stay in the tent and lock the children inside. AIDEON overhears words like "claw marks" and "black blood."
From the trees, something growls. The men shout, hurling burning sticks into the dark. For a heartbeat, the forest lights up—eyes glimmering between trunks. Then the lights go out, swallowed by silence. A single scream cuts through the stillness, then nothing. The torches start falling, one by one.
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The silence breaks like glass. A roar answers from beyond reason—neither beast nor man. The camp erupts. Parents snatch children, tents collapse, horses bolt. Jane, the woman who gathered the little ones, calls for order. Shadows pour from the woods—skeletal, horned, gleaming wet.
Cassiel clings to AIDEON's hand as firelight catches the first creature's face: a mask of meat and black bone. AIDEON shoves his siblings behind him. The night explodes into running, fire, and blood. The chapter ends with AIDEON turning toward the darkness as Jane's scream is cut short.
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