Morning crept gently over Los, sliding across broken towers and fractured stone like pale
water filling ruins. The village stirred slowly beneath the rising sun. Shop shutters creaked
open, buckets lowered into the well with a familiar groan of rope, and guards at the northern
gate leaned on their spears with half-lidded eyes. Smoke drifted lazily into the sky. It looked
peaceful from a distance -- almost whole.
Inside the small stone house near the river, Kellen woke with a tight breath lodged in
his chest. The dream clung to him stubbornly, refusing to dissolve with the morning light:
endless white halls, a metallic voice calling him Master, something vast and unseen watching
from beyond the brightness -- patient, certain, ancient in a way that made his skin feel thin.
He pushed himself upright and pressed his palm to the mark running from his forehead down
the left side of his neck. For a moment it was still beneath his touch. Then came a faint
vibration, subtle as a pulse beneath skin -- neither painful nor warm, only aware. As if it,
too, had been dreaming. He swallowed and forced his hand away.
Zorin's steady snoring drifted from the other side of the room. That sound grounded
him. Real. Ordinary. He focused on it until his breathing levelled.
He dressed quietly, lacing his boots tighter than usual, the way he always did when he
felt unsteady -- something to hold him to the ground. The grain jar held barely a day's worth
of food. If he returned empty-handed, they would feel it before either of them said a word. He
took his satchel, secured two crude spears across his back, and slipped out before Zorin
stirred.
The northern gate loomed ahead. The guards glanced at him briefly -- some with
indifference, others with that familiar mixture of suspicion and something that might have been
pity, though neither looked long enough for him to be certain. The marked boy. He kept his
eyes forward and stepped beyond the wall.
The forest path swallowed him gradually. At first, sunlight still touched his shoulders,
warming the back of his neck. The further he walked, the thicker the branches grew overhead,
knitting together into a shifting canopy that filtered the light into something green and diffuse.
The air cooled, damp with moss and turned soil. Each step sank slightly into earth softened by
last night's dew. He adjusted his breathing, slowing it deliberately. Hunting required patience
-- required him to become part of the stillness rather than a disturbance moving through it.
Today, though, he felt oddly exposed. The dream had not fully let go. It followed him past the
wall, threading itself through the shadows between trees, making every familiar hollow seem
darker than it should have been.
He began with berries, crouching near a heavy bush whose dark fruit hung low. His
fingers worked carefully, testing firmness, scanning the ground for disturbed soil or claw
marks before committing his weight. The forest was not silent -- birds fluttered high above,
insects hummed near the roots -- but every small sound felt sharper than usual, arriving at
him with a precision that set his nerves to a quiet, sustained hum. A branch cracked somewhere
in the distance. He froze, heart thudding hard once, then steadying as he listened. Nothing
followed. Probably a squirrel. Probably.
He resumed picking, slower now, sliding the berries into his pouch without letting them
bruise. His stained fingers trembled faintly before going still again. "Focus," he muttered
under his breath. "You've done this a hundred times." The words were meant to anchor him.
They felt thin instead, like rope too frayed to fully trust.
Further ahead he spotted a fig tree, its bark rough and peeling in long strips. Climbing
forced him to commit fully -- to both hands, both feet, no easy escape if something charged
below. He hesitated at the base, scanning the undergrowth with his gaze moving slowly from
shadow to shadow. He saw nothing. He climbed anyway, because he always did. The bark
bit into his palms as he pulled himself higher, the familiar pain of it sharpening his focus in
the way discomfort sometimes could. From the highest branch, he could see deeper into the
forest where light thinned into green shadow and the trees grew older and closer together.
It felt larger today. Watching, somehow. He shook the thought away with more force than he
intended and plucked the ripest figs, placing them carefully into his satchel. A single drop of
juice slid down his wrist, warm and bright against his skin. The small ordinariness of it
helped. He held onto it.
When he dropped back to the ground, he did not smile.
The rustle came later -- soft, rhythmic, purposeful. Not wind. He lowered himself
slowly behind a cluster of ferns, parting them just enough to see through. Two rabbits grazed
in a small clearing, entirely unaware of him. Kellen slowed his breathing with the
deliberateness of long practice. Inhale. Hold. Exhale halfway. His fingers tightened around
the spear shaft until his knuckles whitened and the wood pressed grooves into his palm. One
of the rabbits shifted, raising its head, ears swivelling. He froze completely -- not just his
body but the intention behind it, becoming something still and patient as stone. Sweat gathered
at the base of his neck. Seconds stretched. The animal resumed chewing.
"Easy," he whispered to himself, barely any sound at all. "No sudden moves."
He rose inch by inch, drawing his arm back with a slowness that burned in his shoulder.
His heart pounded so loudly he almost believed they would hear it. The first throw left his
hand with a sharp whistle of displaced air. The stone tip struck cleanly. The rabbit dropped
with a single twitch and went still.
The second bolted instantly. Kellen did not let panic take him -- not because he wasn't
afraid, but because he had learned, slowly and imperfectly, that fear and action could coexist
if he moved before the fear could settle into certainty. He pivoted, already reaching for the
smaller spear. The animal zigzagged through low brush, fast and erratic. He adjusted his
angle, waited half a breath longer than every instinct demanded, and threw. The spear clipped
its flank and spun it sideways with a startled squeal. He lunged forward, covering the ground
in three strides, and pinned it beneath his hands -- gently, but firmly enough. Its hind legs
kicked weakly against his forearm, fast and desperate. "Forgive me," he murmured, and
ended its struggle as quickly as he knew how. When it went still, he sat back on his heels and
exhaled -- a long, unsteady breath he hadn't realised he'd been holding tight since the first
throw. His chest trembled once before it steadied. Hunting always brought tension with it.
Today that tension had teeth, and it lingered even after the work was done.
He retrieved the smaller spear from the ferns where it had landed, checked the stone tip
was still seated, and secured it across his back alongside the larger one. Then he tied both
rabbits to his satchel and stood, scanning the trees. The forest looked unchanged. Normal.
He told himself that twice.
He had just begun to relax when the world shifted.
There was no warning growl. No snapping branch underfoot. No tremor rippling through
the earth to announce what was coming.
Only the sudden presence.
A massive shape stood between two trees barely thirty paces away.
Kellen's breath caught violently in his throat, the sound of it almost audible.
The bull had appeared without sound, as if it had always occupied that space and he had
only now learned to see it. Its body was enormous -- shoulders rolling and shifting beneath
hide dark as scorched iron, muscles moving in slow, unnatural waves beneath the surface as
though something coiled inside it breathed on a rhythm different from any living thing he had
known. Its horns were jagged and uneven, one split along its length with a faint red glow
tracing the crack like embers buried deep in old wood. Its eyes were not the brown of livestock
but a heavy, lightless crimson -- and they were watching him with a stillness that felt,
somehow, like intelligence.
For a heartbeat, neither of them moved.
"What..." Kellen breathed, the words dry and very small. "What are you?"
The bull exhaled. The sound of it was enormous in the quiet -- a low, pressurised release
that stirred the nearest leaves.
Then one hoof lifted.
And fell.
The ground fractured under the impact, a sharp crack splitting the earth outward from
its foot in a spiderweb pattern, soil splitting like old pottery. Kellen stumbled back a full step
before he caught himself. "No -- stay back," he said, and hated that his voice shook despite
every effort he made to hold it flat. He raised his spear between them though he already knew,
with a cold certainty settling beneath his sternum, that it was meaningless. "I don't want
trouble. I'm leaving."
The bull lowered its head.
Then it charged.
The explosion of its first full stride shook leaves from their branches and sent birds
scattering from the canopy in a burst of panicked wings. Each hoofbeat landed like a hammer
against stone, sending tremors crawling up through Kellen's legs as he turned and ran -- not
a decision, exactly, more the body choosing survival before the mind could weigh in. Fear
burned away thought entirely. Branches whipped across his face and forearms as he sprinted
through narrow gaps between trunks. Behind him, those same trunks shattered like dry reeds
when the bull plowed directly through them, not bothering to go around.
"Too fast -- too fast!" he gasped, lungs already beginning to burn. "How are you so
fast?!"
A horn slashed past his shoulder close enough that he felt the displaced air brush against
his skin -- a cold, brief pressure that bypassed shock entirely and went straight into pure,
crystalline terror. He threw himself sideways on pure instinct, rolling across damp soil. The
bull's hoof struck the earth where his spine had been an instant before, cracking it open in a
pattern that spread outward like broken glass. Dirt sprayed across his face and filled his
mouth.
He scrambled upright before the impact had fully registered. "Think, Kellen -- think!"
He drove himself toward thicker clusters of trees, forcing tight turns that cost him speed but
demanded the creature pivot, its enormous weight becoming briefly a disadvantage. The bull
adjusted unnaturally well regardless, pivoting despite its size with a precision that had no
business belonging to something that large, hooves gouging long trenches with each sharp
shift of direction. The sound of them -- deep, thunderous, relentless -- echoed inside his
skull and refused to stop.
He spotted a slope ahead, dropping sharply toward a narrow stream, and sprinted for it
without taking time to evaluate. Mud gave way under his boots as he descended, half-running
and half-sliding, barely keeping upright by throwing his arms wide. Behind him, the bull
attempted the descent and its weight worked against it for the first time -- loose stones
cascaded beneath its hooves, the slope offering nothing solid to push from. Its momentum
shifted wrong. It slammed shoulder-first into exposed rock with a sound like a falling tree,
dislodging half the slope in a violent cascade of stone and displaced earth.
Kellen did not stop running until he reached the opposite bank. He turned only when the
hoofbeats behind him had ceased.
The bull stood above the slope, staring down at him. Steam poured from its nostrils in
thick, rolling clouds that curled in the cool air. Its crimson gaze had not moved from him.
For several long seconds, neither of them moved. Then -- slowly, without urgency, as
though it had decided something rather than been stopped by anything -- the creature turned
away and disappeared between the trees without another sound. As if it had never intended
to kill him. As if this had been something else entirely.
Kellen remained frozen, staring at the space where it had vanished. He counted breaths.
One. Two. Ten. Twenty. The forest sounds returned cautiously -- insects first, distant birds
following -- as though the world was also waiting to be certain before resuming. Only when
they fully returned did he allow his knees to weaken. He sank to the ground, chest heaving,
hands pressed flat against damp earth because he needed to feel something solid beneath them.
"It's gone," he whispered. He said it three times before he believed it.
After several minutes, when his shaking had eased enough to trust his legs, he stood,
tightened the strap of his satchel, and looked around at the trees. The stream ran somewhere
to his left. The forest surrounded him on every side. He had no clear sense of which direction
was home.
He chose a direction and walked.