A sick, wet dragging sound slices through the air like a cleaver through sinew. Kragna’s head snaps toward the trees. My hand’s already on my rifle, fingers tight around the grip. We freeze, side by side, breath caught, hearts pounding.
The fog parts—and out lumbers the stuff of nightmares.
She’s bigger than a wagon and just as wide. Six heads, all lemurian and serpentine, jerk and bob on long, scaly necks, each one hissing, snorting, muttering to itself in some ancient tongue. Her hide is a patchwork of scale and fur, the color of old bruises. Between her claws drags a moose-like carcass, limp and bloody, antlers shattered, belly torn open like a burst wineskin.
I raise the barrel out of instinct, but Kragna’s hand is suddenly on mine, firm but gentle, pushing it down.
“She won’t hurt us,” he says low, without taking his eyes off the beast. “She’s… a friend.”
My mouth opens. Shuts. I’ve got a million questions, but I can’t seem to make my tongue work.
The creature—Hydra? Harriet?—shuffles past, one of her heads eyeing me with a sort of feline boredom. Another head burps, loudly. A third sneezes. The others just mutter and hiss among themselves like they’re having a six-way argument and nobody’s winning.
She lumbers off into the gloom with her kill, the dragging sound fading into the mist.
I blow out a breath I didn’t know I was holding. “You have weird friends.”
“You should see my neighbors.”
“I feel like I just did.”
He grins, wide and boyish, and I don’t know what to do with that. I’ve never seen something so monstrous look so... gentle.
We walk again, the silence now humming with unspoken things. My chest still aches from the adrenaline crash, my head spinning with too many thoughts I don’t want to unpack. But the forest doesn’t care. It keeps on being what it is—vast, damp, secretive.
The trail narrows near the ravine. Trees grow denser, curling over like skeletal fingers clawing at the light. We step through a break in the underbrush and my boot hits something.
It clinks.
I look down.
A shell casing. Cold iron. One of ours.
I freeze.
Kragna notices and slows, watching me. I crouch, pick it up with shaking fingers. It’s scorched. Still smells faintly of magic and sulfur. The kind of shot that only leaves a barrel when shit’s already gone to hell.
I scan the forest floor. Bits of gear are half-buried in the loam—shredded cloth, a shattered scope, a broken belt buckle. Someone’s knife, snapped in half. Blood stains on stone, turned brown with age.
This is where it happened.
Where we were ambushed. Where they died.
I feel it like a blow to the chest. The past cracks open like a fault line under my feet, and the memories come rushing up, fast and hot and ugly.
They screamed. I remember that. The way their voices got choked out mid-word. The wet slap of flesh against stone. The crunch of bones. The laughter—deep, cruel, unhurried. The taste of copper in my mouth as I bit back panic. The burn in my lungs as I ran. Jumped. Fell.
The river.
The cold.
And then nothing.
I sway where I stand.
Kragna steps close. He doesn’t speak. Doesn’t ask if I’m okay or try to touch me again. He just rests one massive hand on my shoulder—warm, grounding, real.
That one quiet gesture means more than all the pretty speeches I’ve heard in my life.
