The howl from the night before still lingered in my head when dawn came.
It wasn't the kind of sound you forgot. Not the hunger of a wolf, not the call of a hunting cat. This was deeper. Older. Like stone grinding on stone, carried on the wind.
Squad Four met at the gates, as we always did. No one spoke much. Vell's eyes were shadowed from lack of sleep, Riken's jaw tight with thought. Danya looked like she'd been up before the rest of us, oiling her spear in silence.
The Eastern Commons were quiet. Too quiet.
We retraced our patrol route, moving in slow arcs that kept us within sight of each other. The air was brittle, the kind of cold that stung the lungs.
Near the old aqueduct, fresh tracks crossed our path.
Not the same ones from yesterday.
These were wide, heavy, pressed deep into the frozen ground. Three claws, forward-facing. Spaced far apart, like something had been running on limbs longer than a man's.
Brayden crouched low. "Bigger than the ones in the tunnel. Much bigger."
"Fresh?" I asked.
He nodded. "Last few hours."
They led away from the tunnel and toward the outer tree line. Another set of prints—lighter, narrower—cut across them at an angle. Almost human in shape, if not for the backward bend of the toes.
Two sets.
Two creatures.
"Again," Danya murmured. "They're crossing paths."
Riken's eyes narrowed. "Or hunting each other."
The prints ended at a small clearing where the frost had been churned into mud. Branches were snapped overhead, bark torn in strips. And in the center of it all—blood.
Not much. Just enough to stain the ground dark.
I stepped closer. The air still held the copper tang of it. But there was no body, no drag marks, no sign of what had bled.
"Something stood here," Vell said. "And didn't fall."
"Or walked away," I replied.
We lingered longer than we should have, searching the treeline for movement. But the forest remained still.
When we returned to the barracks at dusk, the atmosphere had shifted. Instructors came and went more often than usual. Conversations dropped into silence when we passed.
Halvren was at the far end of the training hall, speaking with two other officers. He didn't look at us directly. Didn't need to.
I caught it anyway—that slight turn of the head, the flicker of eyes measuring distance, the way his words slowed until we'd passed.
He was listening.
That night, over the dim light of the barracks hearth, we spread a rough map across the table.
"Two creatures," Brayden said. "The bigger one's the killer. The smaller one… not sure."
"It made a den," Danya reminded him. "Didn't waste its kills. That's not monster behavior."
Riken tapped the map. "They're overlapping territory. That's why we keep finding both."
"And why it feels like the air changes when we're near them," Vell added. "They know we're there. Both of them."
I leaned back, watching the firelight dance over the green feather still in my hand.
We didn't have enough yet. Just scraps of signs and too many unanswered questions. But something in my gut told me this wasn't random.
Two things in the same ground, circling each other. One careful. One cruel.
A turf war.
And we'd stepped straight into the middle of it.