# Chapter Five
They didn't dare breathe.
Zane and Kaelion lay frozen in the trench of corpses, the stench of death so thick it coated their tongues like oil. Above them, the creature's shadow fell across the rim of the pit, blocking out what little light remained. Its breathing was wet and labored, each exhale carrying the smell of rot and old blood.
Zane couldn't move. His mind had simply shut down, overwhelmed by the impossibility of what he'd witnessed. A beast that *spoke*. A creature that knew his blood, that called him "little prince" in a language that should have been dead for centuries. His entire body trembled, and he couldn't make it stop.
"*Zane*," Kaelion whispered, so quietly it was barely a breath. "*Zane, look at me.*"
But Zane's eyes were fixed on the creature's shadow, watching it shift and move as the beast prowled the edge of the trench. His hand still bled from the sword cut, drops falling silently into the corpse-mud below.
Kaelion's hand shot out and gripped Zane's shoulder hard enough to hurt. The pain cut through the shock, and Zane's eyes finally focused on his cousin's face. Kaelion's expression was terrified—his skin pale, his eyes too wide—but beneath the fear was something else. *Focus*. *Control*. The kind of calm Arthur had spent years trying to teach them.
"Listen to me," Kaelion breathed, his lips barely moving. "The forest. We can see it from here—maybe two hundred yards. If we can reach it, we can lose this thing in the trees."
Zane wanted to laugh. Lose it? They couldn't even move without—
The creature's breathing stopped.
Both boys went absolutely still, not even allowing their chests to rise and fall. Above them, the silence stretched out for an eternity. Then, slowly, deliberately, they heard the wet sound of the creature's nostrils flaring as it *scented* the air.
"*Yesssss*," it hissed in that grinding-stone voice. "*I can smell you, little ones. I can taste your fear on the wind. It makes the blood so much sweeter...*"
Kaelion's hand moved with glacial slowness, reaching for the torn strip of his tunic. His eyes met Zane's, and without words, he communicated his plan. Zane understood immediately—they'd been speaking without words since they were children, a language of glances and gestures that came from growing up as outsiders together.
Kaelion pointed at Zane's bleeding finger, then at the cloth, then made a throwing motion. Zane nodded fractionally and pressed his cut finger against the fabric, letting the blood soak into the material. The pain helped clear his head, helped push back the paralyzing terror.
The creature was moving again, its massive weight making the ground tremble with each step. It was circling the trench, hunting for the exact position of its prey.
"*Come out, come out*," it sang in a mockery of a children's rhyme. "*The longer you hide, the more it hurts when I find you...*"
Kaelion tied the blood-soaked cloth around a fist-sized rock, his hands shaking but steady enough. They could hear the creature now—not just its voice, but the sound of claws scraping against stone, of something heavy being dragged through the dirt.
Zane risked a glance upward and immediately wished he hadn't. The creature was at the trench's edge, its ruined face tilted downward as if those nail-pierced eye sockets could somehow still see. Its muzzle was open, revealing rows of teeth that gleamed wetly in the fading light. And it was *smiling*.
Kaelion's hand squeezed Zane's arm—*ready?*
Zane nodded, every muscle in his body coiled like a spring.
Kaelion rose just enough to clear the trench's edge and hurled the rock with all his strength. It sailed through the air, trailing droplets of blood, and landed somewhere in the darkness to the east with a heavy *thud*.
The creature's head snapped toward the sound with predatory focus. For one heartbeat, it remained perfectly still, processing. Then it *moved*.
The speed was horrifying. Something that size shouldn't move that fast—it violated every law of nature Zane understood. The creature launched itself toward the sound, covering thirty yards in three bounds, its claws tearing furrows in the earth.
"*NOW!*" Kaelion hissed, already scrambling up the trench wall.
They ran.
Their feet pounded against blood-soaked earth as they sprinted toward the tree line. Zane's lungs burned, his legs screamed, but terror gave him strength he didn't know he possessed. Beside him, Kaelion ran with the same desperate speed, both of them focused on the dark mass of the forest ahead.
Behind them, they heard the creature discover the deception. The roar that followed was so loud, so filled with rage and *anticipation*, that Zane felt it in his bones.
Then came the words, spoken in Ancient Tongue but dripping with malicious joy:
"*Oh, clever little mice. You think you can run? You think you can hide?*" The creature's laughter was like gravel being ground beneath a boot. "*Good. I was hoping you'd run. It's so much more FUN when they run!*"
Another roar, this one different—not rage, but pure, sadistic *excitement*. And beneath the Ancient words, spoken in a voice that seemed to come from the creature's very soul:
"*LET THE HUNT BEGIN!*"
They crashed into the forest without slowing, branches whipping at their faces, roots threatening to trip them with every step. The darkness beneath the canopy was almost absolute, but they couldn't afford to slow down. Behind them, they could hear the creature tearing through the underbrush, moving impossibly fast for something its size.
"The stars!" Kaelion gasped between breaths. "We need to find the stars!"
Arthur had drilled navigation into them until they could find true north by starlight alone, could read the forest like a map written in shadows and moonlight. But the canopy here was thick, ancient trees whose branches wove together so densely that only fragments of sky showed through.
They ran for what felt like hours but was probably minutes, their terror lending them speed they couldn't sustain. Finally, Kaelion grabbed Zane's arm and pulled him to a stop in a small clearing where a fallen tree had opened the canopy enough to see the sky.
"There," Kaelion pointed with a shaking hand. "The Hunter's Crown. West is—"
"Two days," Zane finished, his voice hoarse. "Two days through this cursed forest back to camp."
They both knew what that meant. Two days without food, without rest, hunted by something that seemed to know exactly where they were. Two days through a forest that even the traders feared, where screams echoed at night and things moved in the darkness that had no names.
"We don't have a choice," Kaelion said, and Zane heard the exhaustion beneath his cousin's brave words. "We keep moving, we stay alive. That's all we can do."
Zane nodded, but his mark was throbbing with pain, a constant burning reminder that the creature wasn't hunting randomly. It was hunting *them*, specifically. Hunting their blood.
They moved through the forest as quietly as they could, using every tracking skill Arthur had taught them. They walked on stones where possible, avoided breaking branches, moved with the wind instead of against it. And all the while, they listened.
The forest was too quiet. No birds called. No insects chirped. Even the wind seemed muted, as if the trees themselves were holding their breath.
"Kaelion," Zane whispered after an hour of tense silence. "Do you hear that?"
His cousin tilted his head, listening. At first, there was nothing. Then—faintly, carried on the wind—the sound of something moving through the underbrush. Something large. Something that didn't care about stealth because it didn't need to.
"It's still following us," Kaelion breathed. "How is it still following us?"
Zane touched his mark, feeling it pulse with pain. "It can track our blood somehow. Our marks. It said it's been waiting for 'elden blood.' I think... I think it can sense us."
The implications of that were terrifying. If the creature could track them by their blood, then no amount of stealth or woodcraft would save them. They could run until their hearts burst, and it would always know exactly where they were.
"Then we need supplies," Kaelion said with forced practicality. "We can't run for two days straight without food or water. We'll collapse before we make it halfway."
As if in answer to his words, a smell drifted through the trees—smoke. Not the clean smoke of a campfire, but the thick, greasy smoke of cooking meat. And beneath it, something else. The distinctive scent of Orcish cookfires, which always smelled of sulfur and burnt fat.
Kaelion and Zane exchanged glances. An Orc camp meant danger, but it also meant potential supplies. Food, water, maybe even weapons to replace Zane's broken blade.
"We scout it first," Kaelion decided. "Carefully. If there's too many—"
"We don't have time to be careful," Zane interrupted, surprising himself with the sharpness of his tone. "That thing is still hunting us. We need supplies now, or we're dead anyway."
They moved toward the smoke, every sense on high alert. As they got closer, they began to hear sounds—but not the sounds they expected. No Orcish voices raised in argument or celebration. No clank of weapons or armor. Just... silence, broken occasionally by a wet, tearing sound that made Zane's stomach turn.
They crested a small rise and looked down into a depression where the Orc camp had been established. Or rather, where it *should* have been established. What they saw instead made no sense.
A single figure moved in the clearing below—a young Orc, barely more than a boy, stumbling through the camp with a broken sword clutched in trembling hands. His armor was too big for him, hanging loose on his thin frame. And he was alone.
"Where are the others?" Kaelion whispered.
The young Orc spun at the sound, raising his sword with shaking hands. "Who's there? I'm armed! Stay back!"
Zane and Kaelion emerged from the tree line, their hands visible and empty. The young Orc's eyes widened when he saw their marks.
"Librans," he breathed, and his sword dipped slightly. "Please... please don't hurt me. I don't know where my unit went. I don't know what happened. I just—"
"We're not going to hurt you," Kaelion said, his voice surprisingly gentle. "We just need food and supplies. Help us, and we'll leave you in peace."
The young Orc—he couldn't have been more than sixteen—lowered his sword completely. "Food? Yes, yes, we have food. Plenty of it. Our supply tent is..." He gestured vaguely toward the center of the camp. "I can show you. Please, just... I don't want to die here alone."
There was something desperately genuine in his voice, a fear that transcended the usual Orc bravado. Zane felt a stab of unexpected sympathy. This wasn't a warrior. This was a child, thrust into war and terrified by it.
"What's your name?" Zane asked.
"Gruk," the young Orc replied. "My name is Gruk. I'm with the Blackstone clan, or... I was. I don't know anymore."
"Alright, Gruk," Kaelion said. "Show us to your supply tent, and then we'll—"
He stopped mid-sentence. They all felt it at the same moment—something was wrong. Terribly, fundamentally wrong.
It took Zane a moment to identify what had triggered his instincts. Then he realized: he was wet. Not soaked, but damp, as if he'd been standing in a light rain. But when he looked up, the sky visible through the clearing was perfectly clear, stars twinkling in the darkness.
He looked down at his hand and saw a dark droplet splash against his palm. In the faint light, it looked black. He brought it closer to his face and felt his blood turn to ice.
Not water. Blood.
Another drop fell, hitting his cheek. Then another, and another. Within seconds, it was raining blood—not the heavy downpour of a storm, but a steady, pattering drizzle that seemed to come from nowhere and everywhere at once.
"What is this?" Gruk whimpered, looking up at the trees. "What's happening?"
Kaelion's face had gone white as chalk. "Zane," he said quietly. "Look at the camp. Really look at it."
Zane forced his eyes to focus on the details beyond the immediate horror of the blood rain. The camp was empty—no tents occupied, no fires burning except for a single bonfire in the center. No weapons stacked, no armor maintained. Just... nothing.
Except.
Except the rain wasn't falling everywhere. It was localized, specifically over the camp and nowhere else. The forest beyond the clearing's edge was dry. And as Zane's eyes adjusted to the darkness, he began to see shapes in the trees above them. Large shapes. Irregular shapes. Shapes that swayed slightly in the breeze.
"Oh gods," he breathed.
They were bodies. Dozens of them, maybe more, hung from the trees like macabre ornaments. Orc warriors, strung up by their own entrails, gutted and left to drain. The blood rain wasn't mysterious at all—it was simply gravity working on corpses that had been torn open and suspended above the clearing.
The camp wasn't empty because the Orcs had left.
It was empty because they were all dead.
"We need to leave," Kaelion said, his voice tight with barely controlled panic. "Right now. We need to—"
A wet, heavy sound echoed from the trees directly above them. The sound of something large and fleshy being torn apart. Of teeth grinding through bone. Of satisfied, gluttonous *feeding*.
Slowly, with the horrible inevitability of a nightmare, they looked up.
The creature crouched in the branches above them, barely visible in the darkness. In its claws, it held the upper half of an Orc warrior, and as they watched in frozen horror, it took another bite, its teeth shearing through armor and flesh with equal ease. Blood poured from the corpse, joining the rain falling on the boys below.
The creature chewed slowly, deliberately, its ruined face tilted down toward them. Even without eyes, Zane could feel its gaze. Could feel the weight of its attention settling on them like a physical thing.
Then it stopped chewing.
The silence that followed was absolute. Even the blood seemed to stop falling, as if the world itself was holding its breath.
The creature's jaw opened, and the partially eaten corpse fell from its mouth, landing in the clearing with a wet *splat*. The head—still attached by a thin strip of neck muscle—rolled toward Gruk's feet. The young Orc stared at it, at the face of what had probably been his commander or mentor, and made a sound that was barely human.
When the creature spoke, its voice was different than before. Not threatening. Not angry. Almost... *playful*.
"*Well, well, well*," it said in perfect Ancient Tongue, each word dripping with malicious amusement. "*What have we here? Three little mice, walking straight into the spider's web.*"
It dropped from the tree with impossible grace, landing in the clearing twenty feet from them. This close, in the light of the bonfire, they could see it clearly for the first time.
The beast was larger than they'd realized—easily the size of two horses placed end to end. Its body was a patchwork of rotting flesh and exposed muscle, black veins visible beneath translucent skin. The nails and barbed wire driven through its eye sockets wept constant tears of blood and pus, creating dark trails down its muzzle. But it was the mouth that drew the eye—when it smiled, and it was definitely smiling, the teeth seemed to go on forever, row after row of serrated daggers designed for one purpose: *tearing*.
"*I must thank you*," the creature continued, circling them slowly. "*You led me straight to this delightful little feast. I was growing tired of Orc meat—so stringy, so bitter with fear. But then I caught your scent again, little prince, and I simply couldn't resist following.*"
"Run," Kaelion whispered. "Zane, when I say go, you run for the trees and you don't look back."
"I'm not leaving—"
"*RUN!*"
The creature's head snapped toward Kaelion with predatory focus. "*Oh, how precious. The lesser blood thinks he can sacrifice himself for the greater. How noble. How... futile.*"
It moved.
One moment it was twenty feet away. The next, it was on top of Gruk, its massive jaws closing around the young Orc before he could even scream. There was a sound like wet branches breaking, a brief spray of blood, and then Gruk was gone—not dead, but *gone*, swallowed whole by a throat that seemed impossibly large.
The creature swallowed with obvious relish, its ruined face tilting back as the Orc's body traveled down its gullet. When it looked back at them, its smile had grown impossibly wider.
"*Mmmm. Appetizer.*" It took a step toward them, claws gouging furrows in the blood-soaked earth. "*Now for the main course.*"
Kaelion grabbed Zane's arm. "RUN!"
They ran.
Behind them, the creature's laughter echoed through the forest, a sound that seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere at once. And beneath the laughter, spoken in Ancient Tongue with the casual cruelty of a predator who knows its prey cannot escape:
"*I do so love it when they run. It makes the blood pump faster, makes it taste so much richer when I finally catch them. And I will catch you, little prince. I always catch them in the end.*"
The creature's voice dropped to a whisper that somehow carried through the entire forest:
"*After all... I can smell your fear.*"
They ran through the darkness, through the blood rain, through a forest that seemed to close in around them with every step. And behind them, never hurrying, never rushing, the creature followed.
The hunt had truly begun.