The night felt thinner after the fight.
Not calmer — no, the air still carried tension — but thinner, as if something had scraped away part of the world's skin. The fire had burned low, but no one moved to feed it. The boy sat close to Halric, clutching his knees, eyes fixed on the black emptiness beyond the ravine mouth.
Kael cleaned his sword with slow, deliberate strokes. He had learned long ago that after a battle, the real danger wasn't over — it only changed shape.
The creature's dust had vanished completely. No bone, no scale, no sign it had ever been there.
"Elara," Kael said quietly. "Any tracks leading in?"
She shook her head. "I checked while you were catching your breath. Nothing. Not even a broken leaf. It's as if it stepped out of the dark itself."
"It did," Kael murmured, more to himself than to her.
Halric caught the words. "What's that supposed to mean?"
Kael slid the sword into its sheath. "Some hunters don't walk here in the way you or I do. They're pulled through — drawn by scent or blood."
Halric's brow furrowed. "Scent? Blood?" His eyes shifted toward Kael in a way that wasn't entirely friendly. "Yours, I take it?"
Kael didn't deny it. "It was looking for me, not you. But it would've gutted you to get there."
The warrior grunted and looked away. He didn't like the truth, but he didn't argue.
---
Dawn broke reluctantly, as if the sun itself was unwilling to see this stretch of forest. They packed in silence, each glance toward the treeline carrying a shadow of last night's encounter.
The path ahead was narrow, winding through sharp ridges of stone. Moss clung to every surface, and the air was wet enough to make each step slick.
Kael led, Elara behind him, then Halric and the boy bringing up the rear. The abyss inside Kael lay quieter than before, though not fully at rest — more like a predator digesting.
After an hour, the path split. One route led downward into a gulley choked with fog; the other climbed a slope lined with thorn trees.
"We go up," Kael decided.
Halric frowned. "Why? The gulley looks easier."
Kael didn't slow his step. "It is. That's the problem."
They were halfway up the slope when Kael stopped. The smell reached him first — faint but sharp, like iron left in the rain. Blood.
He raised a hand. "Stay close."
They rounded a bend and saw it: a shattered wagon, its frame splintered, one wheel missing entirely. Blood streaked the stones in arcs, but no bodies lay nearby.
Elara knelt, running a hand over the marks. "Drag lines. Whatever did this took them alive."
The boy paled. "For what?"
Kael's eyes scanned the tree line. "Depends who — or what — did the taking."
A low moan drifted on the breeze.
They followed the sound cautiously, weapons ready. Behind a cluster of thorn trees, they found him — a man slumped against the trunk, one leg twisted at a wrong angle, clothes torn and soaked with blood. His eyes were glassy, half-conscious.
Elara knelt beside him. "Easy. We're here to help."
The man's lips moved, the words coming in a rasp. "Took… them… the… hollow…"
Kael leaned closer. "The hollow?"
The man's gaze flicked to Kael's face — and widened in fear. "Not you… it's looking for you…"
Kael's jaw tightened. "Where's the hollow?"
The man coughed wetly, blood flecking his lips. "Down… the gulley… the fog…" His head slumped forward, breath stilled.
Elara closed his eyes gently.
Halric exhaled through his nose. "If that's where they took them, we're going into the gulley after all."
---
The fog in the gulley was thick enough to bead on their skin. It muffled sound, turning every footstep into something that felt too close, too loud.
Kael kept one hand on his sword and the other brushing the wall of rock to his left. The abyss stirred again — faintly at first, then sharper, as if recognizing the air here.
Shapes loomed ahead — standing stones, their surfaces carved with deep grooves that looked more like claw marks than chisel work.
The boy's voice was barely a whisper. "I don't like this place."
"Neither do I," Elara replied.
The path widened into a basin, ringed with more of the standing stones. In the center yawned a pit, its edges rimmed with black moss. From below came a faint, rhythmic sound — breathing.
Halric's grip tightened on his hammer. "Tell me that's the wind."
Kael didn't answer.
A figure moved in the fog on the far side of the basin. Tall, thin, wrapped in tattered cloth. It didn't walk so much as glide, its feet hidden by the mist.
When it spoke, the voice was many voices, layered and wrong. "Abyss-bearer."
The abyss in Kael's chest surged like a struck drum.
Halric glanced between them. "Friend of yours?"
Kael stepped forward. "You sent the hunter."
The figure tilted its head. "One of many. The dragons will not wait forever, and neither will I."
The mention of dragons tightened every muscle in Kael's body. "What do you want?"
The voice hissed through the mist. "The hollow feeds. Give it what it hungers for, and I will call off the rest."
Kael's hand rested on his sword. "And if I refuse?"
The breathing from the pit below deepened. A shape stirred in the darkness there — massive, scaled, and far too close.
The figure's many voices answered as one. "Then you will see what wakes beneath the fog."
---
The thing in the pit exhaled, and the fog thickened, curling around their legs. Elara took a step back, arrow already nocked. Halric squared his stance beside her.
Kael didn't move. His eyes stayed locked on the figure. "I don't bargain with things that send assassins after me."
The figure's shape seemed to fray at the edges, dissolving into the mist. "Then you will be devoured all the sooner."
The pit's breathing became a growl. Something huge shifted below, and the ground trembled beneath their feet.
Kael drew his sword. "We're leaving. Now."
They backed toward the gulley's entrance, never turning their backs on the pit. The fog followed them, clinging like fingers, until they reached the slope and began to climb.
Only when they were back in the thin morning light did Halric break the silence. "Whatever that was, it wasn't a dragon. But it wasn't anything I want to meet twice."
Kael sheathed his blade. "It was a warning."
Elara frowned. "From who?"
Kael looked back toward the gulley, where the fog still churned unnaturally.
"From something older than dragons," he said. "And it wants me alive… for now."