Hunt for the Wounded Beast
The frantic clang of the alarm had faded into the night, leaving an unnerving silence in its wake. But for Kaylah, it was a silence that carried a thousand questions. She knew what that noise meant. Not a stray beast, not a lost scavenger, but something with enough size and fury to test their defenses. Eris, still in a deep sleep, his breathing soft and even, seemed untouched by the danger that had rattled the very stone of their home.
By morning, the story was already a legend whispered over thin broth. A lone glass-back wolf, bigger than any they'd seen before, had battered the outer gate. It was a beast with a matted, silver-streaked coat and a deep wound in its flank, as if it had been gored by something much larger. Though the night watch had driven it off, a wounded beast was a desperate one, and the hunters of Haven Below knew that desperate things never truly left until they were dead.
The group hunting team moved out under the first gray light of morning, a grim and silent procession. At their head was Barik, a battle-hardened man in his mid-40s. Scars crisscrossed his face and arms, telling stories of a thousand skirmishes with the ruin, and his presence alone made the others stand a little straighter.
Beside him was Dara, a young woman no older than twenty, with a wiry frame and quick, intelligent eyes that constantly scanned the ground. She was their tracker, her skills honed from years of following the faint, fractured trails of their world. She's an outlander who was accepted by the tribe because of her skill. The elders were wary at first, but after saving her team members many times in the past, she gained their support and trust.
Bringing up the rear were Joeren and Marik, their presence an open secret of tribal politics. The two had pushed their way onto the team, using their uncle's influence as an elder to gain experience.
Joeren, swaggering with a self-assured grin, held his head high. He carried the heavy-duty bolt-launcher, a formidable weapon Kaylah and her team had spent a winter piecing together from rusted pipes and a salvaged piston.
He had paid well for it in meat and supplies, but Kaylah knew its design better than anyone. She knew its strengths—the way its heavy bolts could pierce old metal—but she also knew its weaknesses. Its mechanism was prone to jamming if a single drop of grime found its way inside. Marik, however, was quiet, his face a tight mask of nerves.
The team was only seven strong, a bare minimum for a hunt of this magnitude. They couldn't ask for more to leave the safety of Haven Below; the elders had to be prepared for any surprise attack heavier than the lone beast they sought out. The hunters knew that the earlier they could follow the trail, the better. They wouldn't allow the beast time to heal. A wounded thing could be tracked, but a healed one would vanish back into the unforgiving labyrinth of the ruin, making it impossible to find.
***
The Beast in the Gorge (Dara's POV)
The elders' instruction was clear, and it was a promise: "Find it. A wounded beast is a threat to us all. Kill it, but protect yourselves first, and return home safe."
Their instruction was clear, and it carried the weight of a promise: "Find it. A wounded beast is a threat to us all. Kill it, but protect yourselves first—and return home safe." I repeated those words in my mind, anchoring myself with their certainty. But there were other voices, quieter ones, that echoed beneath them—expectations left unspoken, obligations I carried from people who had never set foot in Haven Below.
The ones who sent me… they speak of duty and legacy, but I've never seen their faces soften with grief. I've never heard them speak of mercy.
I had reasons of my own for joining this hunt. Not just to protect the walls we slept behind, or the lives that depended on this team's survival. There were threads pulling me from further away—distant names, vanished bloodlines, old stories twisted into warnings. Perhaps I wasn't only here to slay a beast.
Return home safe, the elders said.
But which home? The question lingered, unwanted.
Every step I took with this team, every shared meal and tired smile, made the weight harder to carry. I was supposed to stay distant. Observing was safer than belonging.
But how do you observe people you've started to care about?
The main gate of Haven Below creaked open—an uneven patchwork of scrap metal and salvaged beams, welded together into a crude but sturdy barricade. Deep dents marred its surface, scars from the wounded beast's violent assault the night before.
Our team stepped out in silence. Most wore grim expressions, boots crunching over ash and gravel, the weight of what awaited us pressing into every step. Only Joeren and Marik moved with swagger, strutting ahead like heroes in a tale not yet written. They shouted to no one in particular, voices echoing off the cliff walls.
"We'll bring back the monster's head!" Joeren yelled as if he's leader of the group.
Marik raised his blade with a flourish and seconded, "Try not to fall behind!"
Everyone in Haven was hopeful, but none was cheerful enough to react to the clamor.
The air outside was dry and acrid, sharp against the throat. The wind carried with it a weight—something heavy brewing on the horizon. A storm was coming. Maybe tomorrow. Maybe sooner.
I caught Barik's eye and gave him a subtle nod. He read the message clearly.
We couldn't afford to linger. He understood; and beckoned all to move forward.
My hood was pulled low, shielding my face, but my eyes were wide and sharp, scanning every shadow. The air tasted of rust and wet earth—the typical scent of the ruin—but today it was laced with something new. Unsettling. The coppery tang of the beast's blood.
My boots made no sound on the wet, cracked pavement. I was a ghost, a legend from a world the hunters of Haven had forgotten.
The tracks were clear to me, but not to them. I knew we needed to be fast, but a wounded beast is more dangerous than a healthy one. We needed to be cautious. This beast wasn't fleeing; it was dragging itself forward, each step heavy, uneven, and wounded, yet it wasn't afraid.
But its trail was being muddled. Its dark blood marks on the ground were already being scuffed by clumsy boot prints.
"Hold it, you two! Your tracks are confusing Dara if you're that far ahead of us," Barik warned, his voice low and firm.
"The tracker is slowing us down," Joeren grumbled, kicking a loose stone. The two cousins were young, brave, and strong. They wanted to prove their worth, not wait patiently for a tracker to catch up. They grumbled, squinting ahead into the rain, eager for the hunt.
They could ignore me, but not Barik. I was an outlander; Barik was different. He was born in Haven, and his loyalty had been tested in a hundred hunts. They stopped, their impatience a palpable thing, and begrudgingly waited for me to lead the way.
The claw marks it left behind were strange: thin streaks of silvery residue etched into the stone. Not blood—something deeper. My fingers brushed the lodestone hidden in my pocket. It buzzed softly, a panicked song. I knew what I was tracking wasn't just a beast. It had been touched by the silver.
We descended into a narrow stretch of the gorge, where twisted metal arched like bones and rainwater carved slow rivers through the cracked ground. I couldn't see the beast, but I felt its presence. It was close. Hiding. Waiting.
We descended into a narrow stretch of the gorge, a claustrophobic ravine carved by time and the ruin. The walls were a twisted mess of shattered concrete and rusted metal, creating a treacherous maze of dead ends and natural alcoves. A dark, jagged cave mouth, half-hidden by a tangle of rebar, lay ahead.
Waving and pointing the direction to Barik, "It's in there, in the cave" I whispered.
Barik, his hand raised, stopped the group. "Don't go in. We'll flush it out." He had them collect dry kindling and lit a small fire. We stood near the mouth, our weapons at the ready, watching the smoke drift into the darkness.
But the hours dragged on. The two were driven by a desperate need to prove themselves, grew impatient. The fire crackled, but the beast did not stir.
"This is a waste of time," Joeren sneered, grabbing his volt-launcher. "It's probably already dead. The prize is ours."
"Joeren, no!" Barik shouted.
But it was too late. The two young hunters, fueled by recklessness, ignored him and surged into the cave mouth. They hadn't gone ten feet when the guttural roar of the beast echoed from within. It was no longer a moan of a wounded creature. It was a roar of anger.
From my position just outside the cave, a black blur erupt from the shadows, a massive glass-back whose hide was slick with blood and rain. It charged. Joeren raised his volt-launcher, but the beast's powerful claws swiped it like a twig. The volt-launcher was sent flying, clattering into a deep pile of rubble at the far end of the gorge. Marik scrambled to get away, but another swipe from the beast sent him flying like a rag doll. He crashed hard against a pile of rubble and lay there, leg twisted at an unnatural angle.
We reached for the two and scrambled for cover, but the beast was fast, there's no trace of weakness at all. It is now fully outside the cave, blocking our path . Its roar almost shattered my ear drums for being too close, a cascade of loose rubble to fall from the canyon walls above, sealing our only way out, I can't even hear the frantic yell by Barik to cover for safety. I just acted out of instinct. Then, I realized, there's no way out, we were trapped, pinned against the dead-end wall, with the feral, the beast snarling between us and safety.
Marik was sprawled on the ground, his mouth foaming with pain. Joeren cowered behind a rock, eyes wide and white, trembling. We tried to fight—arrows, spears—all useless.
I reached for my last arrow. Barik's mouth was opened wide, shouting something I could barely hear. The beast charged again, closer, closer. My mind is muddled; distressed by the shadow of death. The end of my missions, of my life—death is coming.
And then—
A whistle, soft and strange, sliced through the storm. A breath of wind that didn't belong.
Thud!
An arrow slammed into the beast's neck. Then another, sharper, faster.
Thud!
The second arrow buried deep in the delicate rock formation near the mouth of the cave, where a slow, rhythmic drip of water echoed from above.
I snapped out of my daze. A sudden clarity of thought came over me as a volcanic rock cracked open from a shot, scalding hot water gushing out nearby.
And he was there.
Eris.
He stood high above, on a narrow ledge carved into the ruin's face, bow still drawn, silver glinting faintly under his skin. His eyes were fixed on the beast. Calm. Steady. Watching. I stared, heart hammering.
***
The Descent and the Dread
Earlier, while the hunting party tracked the wounded beast, Kaylah and Eris found their usual grounds eerily silent. The hunt for small mercies had turned cold hours ago. Game had vanished near the safer zones, driven deeper into the wasteland by the night's alarms.
Kaylah crouched beside a collapsed rail beam, eyes scanning the empty brush.
"The kids will have no food tonight," she murmured, frustration hardening her voice.
Eris stood beside her, jaw tight, eyes distant. The phantom thrum in his wrist pulsed again—low, constant, like a buried current. A buried voice.
"We have to cross the line," he said flatly.
Driven by hunger, by pride, and by the elders' constant disapproval, they crossed the cracked bridge that marked the border of their permitted hunting range. The far slope loomed ahead—twisted brambles, warped trees, and the lip of the gorge.
They kept low, ducking beneath thorn creepers, hoping to flush out stray prey. But as they descended, the sun barely pierced the haze—just a pale smear above the jagged skyline. Cold wind pulled at their hoods. The deeper they went, the heavier the air became—damp earth tinged with something wrong. Something sharp and animal. Not just the river.
Kaylah suddenly stiffened, tapping Eris's shoulder. "Movement," she whispered.
Near the riverbank, a clutch of frost-heaved boulders stood in unnatural silence—usually a perfect hiding spot for hunters. But now, something stirred within. A low snarl rose, too guttural for scavengers. It was followed by the harsh clang of metal—a spear haft against stone, a panicked scramble.
Eris froze. That hum in his wrist flared into something stronger, sharper. This wasn't just misfortune. This was a convergence.
Another growl echoed, then a human scream—pure, unfiltered terror.
"Big blades," Kaylah muttered, grim. She didn't need to say their names. No one else came this deep—not after the last time.
"That must be the glass-back from last night," she added, already drawing her knife.
Eris nodded, his eyes dark with recognition. The trail was clear. Their mercy hunt was over. This was something else entirely.
They moved fast. No more stealth. Just urgency and instinct.
Over the next rise, the signs became unmistakable—smashed brush, torn vines, blood soaked into pale dust. A discarded spear haft. A sliver of hide armor. And nearby, a crude bolt-launcher, half-buried in the dirt. A jagged fang was lodged in its side.
Kaylah knelt beside it. "It bit the launcher," she muttered, amazed and horrified.
She flipped it, working quickly. A pebble had jammed the piston. She popped it loose. The weapon clicked, alive again.
Meanwhile, Eris had found the hunters — half-hidden, entrenched in the gorge wall, rimmed in shadows. The silver in his blood screamed now. This was the place. The beast wasn't retreating. It waited for the hunters and now they are its prey.
Kaylah caught his gaze and signed from her perch: "We can't fight it head-on."
Eris's voice was barely a breath. "It's in the tunnel. It's waiting for them to die."
They crept closer—Kaylah climbing to higher ground, Eris slipping between rusted slabs and broken concrete. They moved like they belonged to the ruin. Shadows in its bones.
From above the ravine, they heard the chaos unfold: spears clashing, stone grinding, shouts and screams—one of them clearly wounded. Kaylah tensed beside him.
Eris's pulse surged. Silver flickered in his veins. He didn't know if it was power or instinct—but he knew this: if they did nothing, no one would make it out alive. He drew his bow—old, scavenged, and barely holding together. The arrow he notched was just as battered, its fletching a frayed strip of leather. He released it without much thought. He relied, not on instinct, but on his silver vein. He commanded and directed.
Twang ! The released arrow whooshing and hit the monster's neck. Thud!
He notched another arrow, this time, Eris didn't aim for the beast. He aimed for a narrow rock formation—just above the mouth of the cave—where water had long dripped, unseen and unimportant.
He fired. Thud!
The second arrow struck true. The rock cracked with a sharp echo. A hidden reservoir burst—a jet of hot water pouring from the fractured stone. It struck the cave mouth with a hiss, blasting steam into the gorge.
The air filled with thick, choking fog. A curtain of heat and white mist. The battlefield changed.
From the edge, Eris and Kaylah watched as the silhouette of the beast faltered—blinded, disoriented. For the first time, it looked unsure.
Now… they had a chance.
***
A Desperate Rescue
When he released the two arrows, silver flicker danced down the bowstring. The gorge swallowed the sound. The beast turned — and doom turned with it.
The glass-back beast jolted, confusion in its movements. It ignored wounds and fallen hunters; eyes locked on the scent's source. Eyes fixed, it sniffed the air, nostrils flaring. Recognition sparked in its primal mind. This was the scent.
The silver.
It had stalked that scent last night—from thorny shrubs where Eris and Kaylah hunted—to the tunnel's mouth, and now here.
Its snarl echoed like a cracked war drum, glass shards along its spine rattling. It sensed what no one else could—the buried shimmer in Eris' blood. A beacon. A summon. A threat.
Kaylah braced the bolt-launcher against her shoulder, aiming for a killing shot. She squeezed the trigger. The weapon roared, launching the spear-like bolt with force. But the angle was tricky, and the beast shifted at the last moment. The bolt sliced across the beast's hind limbs, gouging a shallow gash.
The beast bellowed in rage, pain flaring. Eris cursed under his breath; eyes locked on the enraged beast. The creature was still deadly, charging with renewed fury toward Eris.
It lunged, slower this time, as if savoring the scent. Its roar cut through the air.
Kaylah dropped the launcher—no time for another shot—scanning the terrain like a predator. Her mind read the battlefield—the slope, the thorns, the scattered weapons.
Kaylah didn't hesitate. "The crack! Go!"
They ran, not with the reckless speed of desperation, but with the calculated sprint of two people who knew their terrain. Eris and Kaylah scrambled toward a narrow fissure in the canyon wall—a crack just wide enough for two. They squeezed in, Kaylah shielding Eris' back with her body as he turned to face the beast.
The hunters, still scattered, saw their chance. The beast was distracted. Joeren, his swagger replaced by a trembling rage, grabbed a dropped spear.
Barik moved with a clear-headed purpose, rallying the remaining hunters. "The wounds! Hit the wounds!" he roared, pointing to the matted flank where the bolt-launcher had hit.
Spears and arrows flew, but they were useless. The glass-back's hide was too thick, and with its back turned to them, their attacks were little more than pinpricks. Their action was a joke. They could wound it if they could hit the wounds, but right now it was an impenetrable fortress of rage and vengeance.
In the crack, Eris and Kaylah were the only ones who could wound the beast directly. With Kaylah covering his back, Eris faced the glass-back, which was now trying to force its way into their tiny sanctuary. Eris notched a scavenged arrow, his heart pounding in his chest.
The beast lunged, its head thrusting into the crack. Eris, with the calm that came from a lifetime of being hunted, waited. As the beast drew back for another charge, he pushed the silver in his veins, not to shatter the rock, but to amplify his own strength. A faint, almost imperceptible silver lightning jumped from Eris's hands to the arrow. He released. The arrow flew true, not with the force of a normal bowstring, but with a crackle of kinetic energy that sent it deep into the beast's open maw.
The beast howled in pain, stumbling back. But it wasn't finished. It charged again, this time with a primal rage that shook the very rock walls.
He remembered Elder Ruvio's words: "Don't just kill. Use the world."
He closed his eyes — felt the pulse. The ruin's cold river inside him. The same song Elder Ruvio had told him to listen for. He asked it, the way the old man taught him — not commanded, but bargained.
The silver light spread through his veins, down his fingers. A shimmer dropped from his palm — struck the wet stones by the beast's forelegs. A hush — then the stones cracked, sudden frost blooming where the silver touched.
Eris notched a second arrow. Again, the silver flared, a silent, unseen power that coursed through his veins and into the arrow. The projectile hit the beast's snout, burying itself in the soft flesh.
A third time, Eris pushed the power. He could feel his own strength draining, a cold weariness settling in his bones. This was all he had. The final arrow, charged with the last of his controlled energy, flew from his bow with a silver blur, striking the beast in the eye.
With a final, terrible shriek, the beast stumbled back. It was heavily wounded, its fury replaced by a desperate need to flee. It turned its back on Eris and Kaylah, presenting its wounded flank to the other hunters.
"Now!" Barik screamed.
The hunters, seeing their chance, moved in.
Barik's spear found the deep wound, sinking in and causing the beast to howl. Joeren, shaking off his fear, hurled his spear, hitting the mark. The beast, now overwhelmed, stumbled and fell, a chaos of claws and glass shards. The other hunters, their courage renewed, swarmed it, their spears and arrows finally finding their mark.
The glass-back collapsed in a flurry of glass shards and flailing limbs. The gorge echoed with the sounds of the kill—the thuds of final strikes, the groan of a dying monster.
Then, silence. The battle was over.
The gorge smelled of blood, steam, and shattered earth. The beast lay still.
The wounded slowly emerged from hiding—stunned, bloodied, shaken—but alive.
They had won.
But Eris's hands still trembled, the silver dimming in his veins. Kaylah pressed her palm to his chest—not for comfort, but to feel it. The pulse. The river.
Her eyes were wide. Not afraid. Searching.
The others cheered behind them. But Kaylah looked at Eris like the world had tilted.
And Eris?
He felt no triumph.
Only the whisper of something watching still.
***
Aftermath
The beast, a collapsed heap of matted fur and shattered glass, was finally dead.
Cheers erupted in the gorge, a raw chorus of relief and disbelief. Bloodied but alive, the hunters gathered around the monstrous body, their voices raised in triumph — a counterpoint to the silence of the three who had not survived.
Eris was pulled from beneath a slab of concrete, leg mangled but breathing still. Joeren stumbled out of hiding, face pale and shaky, trying to salvage a scrap of bravado. But no one listened. The hunt was over, and whatever heroism he imagined for himself had long been swallowed by the gorge.
From the rear, Eris and Kaylah emerged from the jagged crack in the rock wall. Dust streaked their faces. Kaylah supported Eris' weight with quiet strength, blood on her sleeves. Eris followed, quieter still, the shadows of the crack clinging to him like a second skin.
None of the others had seen what happened inside. The beast had lunged toward the narrow ravine, blocking their view. What they had seen was its sudden hesitation. A final, unnatural pause — then collapse.
To them, the timing was strange, but the details blurred by chaos.
Barik, blood crusted along one arm, approached the beast's massive head with slow, deliberate steps. His eyes narrowed at the three arrows buried deep into its skull, one piercing through the eye. A normal hunting arrow wouldn't have done this. Not even a well-placed shot.
He crouched, ran a finger over the wound. The shaft was scorched faintly at the edge — not blackened by fire, but marked with something colder, subtler. Something unnatural.
Dara, silent as always, moved to the beast's flank. She traced the old gashes left by spear tips, compared them to the tight cluster around its temple. Her gaze flicked to the ravine where Eris and Kaylah had emerged.
"That kind of shot…" she muttered, "...doesn't happen by accident." Her voice didn't carry.
But Barik heard. He met her eyes for a beat — a silent, shared suspicion passing between hunter and tracker. Then he stood, brushing off his hands as if dismissing the thought.
"Sharp shooting," he said aloud. "Someone up there knew where to aim."
No one questioned it. They were too busy tending wounds and counting blessings. The beast had fallen. That was enough.
Kaylah knelt beside Eris, checking his pulse, already giving quiet orders. Eris stood nearby, silent and distant, watching the gorge — his eyes unreadable.
Joeren glanced at him, sneering. "Hiding in the crack while we took the hits," he muttered, just loud enough. "Then walking out like he saved us."
Kaylah shot him a look that cut the rest of the words from his throat.
Barik moved between them. "That's enough," he said, his voice a low rumble. "No one is dead. We've all done what we had to do. Now, let's get our wounded and prepare to go home with our catch."
Joeren, however, stood stiffly, his face a mask of conflicting emotions, beneath it, a bitter shame and resentment began to simmer. To be saved by the younger, silver-touched boy he so disdained—the humiliation was a wound deeper than any beast's claw. He fell silent, his anger simmering beneath the surface. He glared at Eris and Kaylah for a long moment before turning away.
Eris said nothing. His hands still trembled slightly, but only Kaylah saw. Only she had witnessed what stirred beneath his skin when the silver thread ignited. And even she wasn't sure if she'd imagined it.
The wind howled low through the gorge, threading through stone and broken trees. It carried the whisper of water — not the gurgle of the river, but something deeper. Slower.
The others celebrated. But Joeren didn't join them. He watched Eris from a distance, his face unreadable.
As the sun broke over the ravine, no one noticed how Eris stood apart, the crack behind him and the ruin just beyond — as if caught between two thresholds.
He felt it again, faintly: Not a voice. Not even words. Just a pull — silver and silent.
The hunt was over.
But something else had begun.
***