We keep walking.
The trail narrows, winding along the edge of a cliff. One slip, and it’s a long, wet fall to the river below. I keep low, every muscle coiled. The fog here is almost solid, a wall of green and gray, swallowing sound. I reach out with one hand, touch the slick bark of a pine to guide myself.
Suddenly, a faint, distant—something growls.
Not a wolf. Not an ogre. Something lower. Throatier. Like stone grinding over stone.
The team hears it too. I feel them tense behind me. Safety clicks. Boots shuffle.
I raise a hand.
Stillness.
Something’s ahead. I don’t know what yet—but we’re not alone in these mountains.
And whatever it is, it’s watching us.
I look down.
Another footprint. Bigger this time.
The path ends here.
Something’s wrong.
I don’t mean the usual wrong—this whole mission’s been a dance with death—but now it’s gone quiet. Too quiet. Even the birds have stopped bitching in the trees. That silence? That silence is a noose around my throat.
“Hold,” I whisper.
Nobody listens.
“River, it’s probably just a—” Garth begins.
That’s when the first boulder hits.
It doesn’t roll or tumble—it falls, slams straight down into the line ahead with a sick, bone-wet crunch that silences everything. The fog erupts with screaming. I see blood. Limbs. Bex spinning sideways through the air like a rag doll caught in a gale.
“Ogres!” I shout, diving behind a knotted stump as another boulder whips past, close enough to shear hair off my temple.
They come roaring from the trees like they were born in the bark—hulking slabs of gray flesh and muscle, their tusks stained red, their eyes glowing yellow through the mist. Each one’s the size of a siege engine, skin bristling with embedded nails and armor made from dead things. One of them swings a club that used to be a whole damn tree, roots and all.
I aim.
Breathe.
Squeeze.
The bullet whines through the air—curves left, right, then strikes one dead in the eye. He jerks backward with a wet pop. Brain matter sprays the fern behind him. One down.
“Cold iron!” I yell. “Only the eyes or neck!”
But it’s already too late.
Bex gets caught mid-sprint. A tree-trunk club slams into her side with a sound like an axe splitting wet wood. Her spine folds. She flies. Lands twenty feet off the path in a twisted arc. Doesn’t move again.
“Fuck!”
Lenny screams next. Tries to run. One ogre snatches him by the waist, grinning. Not angry—almost pleased. Like a man about to bite into a hot pie. Lenny thrashes. The ogre lifts him, gazes into his face…then bites his head clean off. Spits the skull into the fog like an olive pit.
