The tracks stretched out before me like a map of malice, etched into the frozen earth by the slavers' careless boots and wagon wheels—the very scum who'd razed that demi-human village to ashes, slaughtering the men in cold blood while dragging off the women and children like livestock to market.
Few knew the face beneath the boar mask. It was a shield as much as a symbol, hiding scars I had no intention of showing the world. But none of that mattered right now. Only the mission did.
I crouched low, my breath misting in the pre-dawn cold as my fingers traced the deep wagon ruts carved into the frozen trail. Heavy. Recently made. They'd been carrying weight. People.
Snow had begun to fall in earnest, a thin veil threatening to swallow the evidence, but I wouldn't let it.
Not when I was this close.
I tracked them with every method I'd honed over years of survival—not just instinct, but experience. Footprints first: a jumble of them, some broad and hobnailed like mercenary issue, others smaller, perhaps from conscripted thugs or opportunistic bandits.
They overlapped in places, telling of a group at least two dozen strong, moving hastily but without fear of pursuit. Who would chase after "mere" demi-humans, after all? To most humans, they were less than vermin—pointy-eared elves dismissed as fragile tree-dwellers, beastkin mocked as savage mutts, all of them branded as inferior by birthright.
Laws enshrined it: no voting rights, no land ownership, forced into ghettos or wild outposts where raids like this were "inevitable." The slavers probably justified it with the usual bile—"purifying the bloodlines," "civilizing the savages"—as if chaining mothers and orphans made them heroes. It sickened me, this rot at the heart of humanity, where fear of the "other" twisted into genocidal glee.
Broken vegetation guided me next: snapped twigs on low-hanging branches, crushed ferns underfoot, leaves torn where bodies had been hauled through the underbrush. Drag marks snaked alongside the wagon tracks, faint lines in the dirt smeared with dark stains—blood traces, no doubt from the wounded or the defiant who fought back before being subdued.
I paused at one spot, kneeling to sniff the air: the metallic tang of iron mixed with the acrid bite of fear-sweat and something fouler, like unwashed hides and cheap tobacco, the slavers' stench clinging to the wind. Further on, campfire remains dotted the path—hastily extinguished rings of ash, scattered bones from pilfered meals, embers still warm enough to suggest they were only hours ahead.
I listened then, closing my eyes to the world: the unnatural silence of the forest, where birds hushed their songs and small creatures froze in their burrows, betrayed the passage of predators far more dangerous than any beast.
Mile after mile, the trail wound deeper into the wilderlands, skirting thorny thickets and frozen streams, until the trees thinned and a faint glow pierced the gloom ahead.
There, nestled in a shallow valley under the gathering snow, lay a village—human, by the looks of it, with sturdy timber walls, smoke curling from chimneys, and the distant clang of a blacksmith's hammer.
Lanterns flickered along the perimeter, casting golden pools on the ground, and I could make out guards patrolling the gates, their silhouettes bulky with armor. Was this their destination? A slaver outpost disguised as a border town, where demi-humans were auctioned off like goods, their cries drowned out by the cheers of "pureblood" buyers? Or just a waystation, complicit in the trade through willful ignorance? Either way, the tracks led straight to it. I melted into the shadows, my hand drifting to the hilt of my blade.
I crept toward the village under the veil of night, the falling snow muffling my steps like a conspirator in my stealth.
The guards at the front gate were lax—two burly men in mismatched armor, huddled around a brazier for warmth, their laughter coarse and oblivious as they swapped crude jokes about "taming the beasts." No real strength within them, just the false confidence of numbers and prejudice.
I skirted the main entrance, slipping through a shadowed gap in the timber wall where the logs had warped from neglect.
My boar mask blended with the darkness, and I moved like a ghost, breath controlled, every muscle attuned to silence. No alarms raised; no shouts of alarm.
They didn't see me, these so-called sentinels, too busy warming their hands while others suffered in chains.
Inside, the facade crumbled immediately.
What looked like a quaint border town from afar was a festering pit of depravity.
Cages lined the central square—iron-barred pens stacked haphazardly like forgotten crates in a warehouse, their occupants huddled in rags against the biting cold.
Demi-human women and children, the very ones snatched from that ruined village and countless others, were treated worse than dogs: collared, muzzled in some cases, forced to cower on straw matted with filth. Elven mothers clutched their wide-eyed young, ears drooping in exhaustion; beastkin children with tails tucked in fear whimpered softly, their fur crusted with mud and blood.
Guards patrolled with whips at the ready, barking orders like "Quiet, you mongrels!" or "On your knees, subhuman scum!"—slurs that rolled off their tongues as naturally as breath.
The air reeked of despair, unwashed bodies, and the metallic bite of chains. Auctions were underway in a nearby pavilion, where bidders—human merchants and nobles in fine cloaks—appraised the "merchandise" with leering eyes, haggling over prices as if discussing cattle. "This one's got strong legs—good for the fields," one sneered. "And the ears on that elf brat? Exotic—fetch a premium in the capital brothels."
I froze in the shadows of an alley, my blood turning to fire in my veins.
The sight clawed at my soul, a visceral punch that made my fists clench until my knuckles whitened. These innocents—families torn apart, lives reduced to commodities—because of what? Pointed ears? Furry tails? Scales or horns that marked them as "lesser" in the eyes of humans who claimed divine right to rule?
The emperor had decreed slavery illegal for humans, a hollow gesture of "progress," but demi-humans? Fair game, as long as it followed "rules"—no mass raids, no public spectacles, keep it discreet.
But here it was, blatant and unchecked: random abductions, villages burned, lives shattered. The empire looked the other way, pockets lined with bribes from slaver guilds, officials turning blind eyes because "those creatures" weren't truly people.
Why enforce laws for beings deemed animals? It was systemic rot, racism woven into the laws, the culture, the very air we breathed—humans atop their pedestal, demi-humans crushed beneath it.
My anger boiled through me like molten steel, urging me to charge out and paint the snow red.
But I kept it calm, leashing it into a cold, precise fury. Rushing in would get me killed, and them no closer to freedom.
No, I'd eliminate every single human here.
None could be innocent; this wasn't a real village, just a cover-up—a slaver den masquerading as a settlement, every resident complicit in the trade.
The blacksmith forging chains, the innkeeper housing buyers, the "farmers" guarding pens—they all profited from the suffering.
I'd start with the patrols, silent and swift, then the leaders. One by one, until the cages swung open and the captives walked free. Justice wouldn't come from the empire; it would come from me.
My first kills were the isolated guards at the village's flanks—lone sentries pacing the perimeter, their eyes glazed with boredom, secure in their delusion of untouchability I quickly proved them wrong.
I struck from the shadows, a silent blur: one throat slit with a whisper of steel, the other snapped like dry kindling. No cries, no alarms just silence.
I dragged their limp forms beyond the borders, dumping them over in the underbrush where the snow would soon bury their sins.
It was all part of the cage I'd woven around this festering den—a trap within a trap. I'd scattered fake snares everywhere outside the walls: tripwires that led nowhere, pit illusions covered in leaves, runes scratched into trees that promised curses but delivered nothing.
No one would escape I wouldn't allow it; they'd panic into dead ends while I culled the herd.
The auction raged on in the central square, a grotesque spectacle under torchlight, where human nobles in silken finery bid on lives like they were trinkets. "Fifty gold for the elf wench—look at those hips, bred for labor or leisure!" one leered, his voice thick with entitlement. "And the beastkin pups? Ten apiece—train 'em young, break that animal spirit before it bites back."
Laughter rippled through the crowd, casual and cruel, as if chaining sentient beings was a sport. These were the elite, the scum, the ones who penned the laws that deemed demi-humans property: "subhumans" unfit for freedom, their mixed blood a stain on "pure" society.
The emperor's ban on human slavery was a joke, a veneer of morality that crumbled when it came to "lesser races." Raids like this were winked at, profits shared with corrupt officials who preached human supremacy from gilded thrones.
It fueled my resolve—to kill them all, these weren't people; they were parasites, feasting on suffering.
While they bartered souls like sheep to the slaughter, I became the wolf. I leaped through the shadows, faster than their dull eyes could perceive, my movements a dance of death honed by years of training.
Into the tavern first: a den of slavers nursing ales, boasting of conquests over "filthy hybrids." I slaughtered them with an iron heart, blade flashing in the dim light—guts spilling across sawdust floors, gasps cut short mid-slur.
No mercy, no hesitation, I couldn't allow it, I wouldn't allow it.
Then the blacksmiths, hammering chains for collars; their forges ran red with their own blood as I ended them mid-swing.
The normal residences followed—humble facades hiding families complicit in the trade, teaching their children to spit on demi-humans as "abominations."
I cleared them room by room, each kill a reckoning for the villages they'd helped raze, the lives they'd shattered.
Finally, the patrolling guards, scattered across the fake village's districts. One by one, I took them: a garrote from behind, a dagger to the kidney, bodies slumped in alleys without a sound. It all unfolded in five blistering minutes, a symphony of silence broken only by the distant cheers of the auction.
But even in that brief span, the eerie quiet seeped in. A noble paused mid-bid, frowning. "Where's the patrol? It's too still—"
I pounced then, emerging from the gloom like a nightmare given form.
With no guards left to shield them, the nobles scattered in panic, silks tearing on cages as they fled. The auction devolved into a bloodbath: screams echoing as my blade reaped through the crowd, severing heads and limbs in a whirlwind of vengeance.
The lead auctioneer, the slave merchant—a corpulent toad in velvet, mouth opening to bark orders—lost his head before a word escaped, his body crumpling in a spray of arterial red. Not an ounce of remorse stirred in me; I massacred them all, as I'd vowed, painting the snow crimson with the blood of those who'd built empires on broken backs.
When the last gasp faded, I turned to the cages. Keys pilfered from the dead unlocked the bars one by one.
The demi-humans recoiled at first, eyes wide with terror—conditioned to expect only pain from a masked human. But as chains fell away, hope flickered: an elven child rubbing her wrists, a beastkin mother gathering her young with trembling arms.
Whispers grew to murmurs, then chants: "The Boar! The Boar! The Boar!" It rolled through the square like thunder, a rallying cry for the oppressed, seeing in my mask not a monster, but a savior.
I ignored it, melting back into the night.
That day, Noel disappeared.In his place, something else was born.A mask. A blade. A warning.A boar-headed phantom that answered cruelty with extinction.And somewhere deep within its borders… the empire learned it could bleed.
I became the symbol of the oppressed, and the retribution of the evil.