Dusk settled like fine grey ash, stealing the color from the pines. The light failed first in the hollows, filling them with a dark, pooling ink that crept slowly up the slopes. They were two hundred meters up the ridge Alani Vainu had chosen, a spine of rock and thin soil. The air was cold, sharp with the scent of pine needles and damp stone. Sineus felt the chill not just on his skin, but as a pressure behind his eyes, a constant thrum from the wall of the Echoing Blight still visible miles to the east.
Alani, their guide from the Forest Folk, moved with a quiet certainty. She wore simple hides and carried no map, yet she navigated the broken terrain as if following a well-known path. She paused, her head tilted, listening to a silence only she could interpret. Fedor Sokolov, the veteran captain of Sineus’s guard, watched her with open distrust. His hand rested on the worn grip of his axe. He trusted steel, stone, and the evidence of his own eyes. This woman offered none of that.
The woods grew thicker here. The trees were dark pillars holding up a bruised purple sky. Visibility dropped with every step. The world shrank to a circle of grey twilight maybe two hundred meters across. The whispers in Sineus’s mind grew louder, snagging on the edges of his thoughts. They were a meaningless chorus, the shredded remnants of things the world had forced itself to forget.
A sound cut through the wind. It was not a whisper. It was a snap. A dry branch breaking under a heavy foot.
Fedor stopped instantly, his body coiled. He was a statue of worn leather and grim intent. He held up a hand, his gaze fixed on the gloom ahead. Alani froze beside him, her focus not on the sound, but on the very ground beneath her feet, as if feeling for a tremor.
Something moved in the trees, a flicker of motion in the deep shadows twenty meters away. It was low to the ground, loping with an uneven gait. It stepped from the cover of a thicket of young birch.
It had the rough shape of a wolf, but it was wrong. The proportions were twisted. Its front limbs were too long, ending in things that looked horribly like human hands. Its back legs were thick and canine, but they bent at an unnatural angle. The fur was a patchy, unhealthy grey, stretched tight over a gaunt frame. It was a thing stitched together from pieces that did not belong.
Sineus felt a spike of cold that had nothing to do with the evening air. He could see it as Fedor did, a physical monster. But through the Pod-sloy, he saw more. It was a shimmering collage of mismatched memories. The desperate hunger of a starving wolf. The terror of a man lost in the woods. The confusion of a stray dog. It was not a creature born of nature. It was an artifact of the Blight.
Then it opened its mouth, and the sound it made was the worst part of all. It was not a growl or a howl. It was the high, thin wail of a lost child. A sound of pure, helpless misery that clawed at the inside of the skull.
The sound broke Fedor’s stillness. He did not hesitate. He was a man built to answer threats.
“Knyaz, behind me,” he commanded, his voice a low rumble.
He moved forward, his axe now in his hand. The heavy blade was a wedge of dark, comforting steel. He took a position between Sineus and the creature, his broad shoulders a solid wall. He was the anchor to the physical world, a world where monsters could be fought and killed.
The creature’s cry cut off. Its head swiveled, its mismatched eyes fixing not on the immediate threat of the warrior, but past him. They locked onto Sineus.
It knew what he was.
With a speed that defied its broken form, the wolf-thing lunged. It did not go for Fedor. It bounded past him in a blur of grey fur and wrong limbs, its path a straight line for Sineus. It was unnaturally fast, a flicker of malice in the dying light.
Fedor roared in frustration, turning to bring his axe around, but the creature was already past him. It covered the ten meters in a heartbeat. Its jaws opened, revealing not wolf’s teeth, but a jumble of sharp, needle-like points.
Sineus had no time to draw a weapon, no time to even brace himself.
Then Alani was there.
She threw herself from the side, moving with a desperate, fluid grace. She did not have a weapon. She did not have armor. She put her own body in the path of the attack, a shield of flesh and bone.
The creature slammed into her. The impact was a sickening thud. Alani cried out, a sharp gasp of pain. The creature’s claws, the ones on its horribly human hands, tore through the leather of her tunic and deep into the flesh of her left arm.
Dark blood welled instantly, staining her sleeve.
The act gave Fedor the moment he needed. His axe swung in a clean, brutal arc. The steel bit deep into the creature’s neck. There was no sound of crunching bone, only a wet, tearing noise. The blow was decisive. It nearly took the head from the body.
The creature’s momentum carried it forward, and it collapsed in a heap at Sineus’s feet. Its body shuddered once, then went still.
For a second, it lay there, a dead thing of fur and flesh. Then it began to unravel.
It did not bleed. It dissolved. The form wavered, turning into a thick, foul-smelling mist. The stench was of rot and sour earth, of things left too long in the dark. The mist swirled, and from it came one final, sorrowful whisper that faded into the wind.
In moments, it was gone. Nothing remained on the damp soil. No body, no blood, no track. Only a wounded ally and the lingering, sick smell of its un-making.
The forest was silent again, the only sound the ragged breathing of three people in the cold, grey dusk.
The wind stirred the high branches of the pines, their needles whispering against the coming night. The first star appeared, a tiny, cold point of light in the darkening sky.
Alani was on the ground, clutching her arm, her face pale and tight with pain, and the journey south had just become much harder.
