The dawn mist clung to the trees like a shroud. Pale light filtered through skeletal branches, washing the forest in gray.
Jano sat at the edge of the clearing, legs crossed, back against a half-toppled trunk. He rubbed his arm absentmindedly—right over the faded mark that once burned with divine purpose.
A sigil, still faintly etched beneath his skin.
A giant bear, roaring upward, its fangs like daggers, its fur inked in curling strokes.
But now it was only a scar of the past.
"You still feel it?" a voice asked gently behind him.
Jano didn't turn.
"No," he said simply.
The young girl sat beside him—his younger cousin, Ara, no more than fourteen, eyes sunken from hunger. Her feet were blistered, but she never complained. She was among the last born under the Bear God's breath. Before the world changed.
Before the devouring.
Years ago, his people had thrived in the Verdant Hollow, a land of endless berries, cold rivers, and towering trees. They shared that sacred space with giant black bears—kin, not threats. Their god, Urum, the Sleeping Maw, kept the peace. A god not of war, but of balance.
He remembered feeding cubs with his bare hands. He remembered the deep drums that echoed like heartbeats during their spring festivals.
He remembered his father, a towering man who bore the Urum Sigil in his chest, glowing like fire when he called the old rites.
But Urum was gone now.
Devoured by another god—something twisted, more beast than divinity. It happened slowly at first: the bears grew violent, corrupted, monstrous. Then the god's voice faded altogether.
Their connection severed.
They had fled Verdant Hollow, and since then, wandered. No land accepted them. No god answered their calls. Some lost faith. Others lost their minds.
Jano tried to hold the threads together.
But now, they were just three hundred tattered lives, most too young to remember the time before. His warriors were broken. Their hunters few. Children cried in the night for warmth they didn't have.
And winter was closing in like the jaws of a hungry beast.
He looked again at the sigil on his arm. The bear was there, but silent. Sleeping, or maybe dead.
"Do you think… another god will ever take us?" Ara asked quietly.
He didn't answer.
He couldn't.
That night, while they huddled around pitiful fires and chewed bark and boiled roots, Jano stood alone at the edge of the trees. Watching. Listening.
And from the forest beyond, he thought—for just a moment—he saw movement. Figures in the dark. Silent. Unseen.
But watching them.
The hunted had become observed.
And fate had not yet cast its final vote.