Kyle was jolted awake by a scream.
It wasn't the muffled cry of a nightmare, but a raw, piercing shriek echoing from the heart of the town—the sound of something being torn apart.
He sat up. The world outside his window was a bruised, leaden gray, caught in that hollow hour between night and dawn. The fireplace had died again, leaving his fingers stiff with cold.
Then came the second sound.
It wasn't a scream. It was a snarl—low, guttural, vibrating from a throat that didn't sound like any natural animal. It was a cold sound, like ice grinding against ice.
Kyle bolted from his bed.
He didn't remember pulling on his boots or grabbing his coat. He only remembered the frantic dash down the stone stairs, his hand skimming the rough wall until his palm burned with raw friction.
The main hall was empty. The hearth was cold. The front door stood wide open.
When he stepped outside, the wind slashed at his face like a razor.
Riverbend was in chaos.
People were sprinting down the main street, others were huddled in doorways, and shouts were lost in a cacophony of shrieks and growls. The rush of the Graywater River was drowned out by a singular, overwhelming sense of panic.
Kyle's eyes scanned the mayhem until he spotted Renard.
The crippled knight was standing at the edge of the clearing, a longsword gripped in his hand, heading toward the northern perimeter. His right leg dragged more heavily than usual, his gait a jagged limp, but his speed was undeniable.
Kyle gave chase.
He ran past the skeletal tree, the stone well, and the half-finished barricades they had labored over just the day before. The mud was a slick mire; he nearly lost his footing several times.
At the northern fence, the defense had failed.
It hadn't been pushed over—it had been shattered. Several of the new logs were splintered on the ground, the hemp ropes snapped like dead snakes. An irregular hole, barely the width of a man, yawned in the wood, its edges forced outward as if something had squeezed through with sheer, brutal strength.
And there, inside the perimeter, Kyle saw it.
It was a wolf, but it defied every law of nature.
It was twice the size of a mountain wolf, its shoulders reaching a man's waist. Its fur was a matted, sickly charcoal, but the color seemed to seep from the bone—an unnatural, necrotic hue. Its eyes were a milky, yellowish-green, the pupils not slits or circles, but... diffused. It was as if something had melted inside its skull, blending the iris and pupil into a singular, glowing orb of madness.
Its muzzle was drenched in crimson. Fresh, steaming blood.
Kyle saw the first victim.
A man in his forties, dressed in homespun cloth, lay near the breach. His throat had been ripped open with jagged precision, as if shredded by hooks. Blood soaked into the mud, turning the earth into a dark, viscous mire. His eyes were wide, staring at the gray sky.
A woman lay further down in a drainage ditch. She was twisted at an impossible angle, caught from behind while fleeing. Her hand was outstretched, fingers clawing at the empty air.
The third was a child.
No more than seven or eight. He was curled against the base of a wall, his small body arched in a futile attempt to make himself invisible. His chest had been raked from shoulder to hip. He wasn't bleeding anymore.
He had nothing left to give.
Kyle stood there, looking at the boy's staring gray eyes, and felt a sudden, hollow void in his chest. It wasn't shock; it was the sensation of his soul being hollowed out.
"Highness!"
Renard's voice pierced the void like a needle.
Kyle snapped back to reality. The wolf was still there. It stood twenty paces from the fallen man, its body coiled low, tail stiff. It wasn't looking at Kyle. It was looking at Renard. Or rather, it was looking at the steel in Renard's hand.
Instinct told the beast the sword was a threat, but its eyes held no fear. Only that diffused, burning lunacy.
"How many?" Kyle asked. His voice was steadier than he expected.
"Six," Renard said, his tone heavy. "Maybe more."
*Seven,* Kyle thought, looking at the boy by the wall.
"The militia?"
"Rallying," Renard replied. "Cole is leading them to flank from the south. Alice is in the tower, looking for a line of sight."
The wolf shifted. Its front claws raked the earth, carving shallow trenches in the frozen mud. The yellow glow in its eyes intensified, fueled by an internal fire.
Kyle remembered what Alice had said: *Aberrants. Corrupted by the Breath of Ruin. The hide is thick, but the eyes are the weakness.*
"Renard," Kyle said. "How long can you hold it?"
Renard glanced at him. "Highness, what are you planning?"
"I'm getting the rifle."
Renard's jaw tightened. "Highness, that thing's speed... it will catch you before you're halfway there."
"Then don't let it."
Kyle wasn't commanding; he was stating a fact. Renard looked at him, a flicker of something unreadable in his lone eye. Then, the scarred old knight gave a short, grim laugh.
"You owe me one for this, Highness."
He tightened his grip on the sword and stepped toward the wolf. He didn't run. He walked—a steady, limping, indomitable stride.
The wolf's head snapped toward him. It coiled its muscles like a drawn bowstring.
Renard stopped ten paces away. He raised the blade, the tip pointing toward the beast's skull, weaving it in a slow, hypnotic arc. It was an old veteran's trick—pitting experience against raw instinct.
The wolf pounced.
It didn't leap in a straight line, but in a lethal, curving arc, trying to hook around Renard's left side to take out his legs.
Renard's sword didn't swing to cut. He used the flat of the blade. He slammed the steel into the wolf's bridge, a sickening *thud* of metal on bone. The beast was knocked sideways, tumbling through the mud in a tangle of limbs.
It was up in an instant.
Blood leaked from its nose, dark and foul. It didn't feel the pain; the corruption had burned that out of its nerves long ago. It snarled, the glow in its eyes turning a vivid, searing gold.
Renard stepped back. His right leg buckled slightly under the strain. "Highness," he hissed through clenched teeth. "Go!"
Kyle ran.
He didn't know how long it took, only that the wind burned his lungs and his heart felt like it was going to burst through his ribs.
He burst into the stone manor, nearly colliding with Alice. She stood in the hall, her short staff glowing with a weak, flickering light.
"The rifle," Kyle gasped. "Where?"
"Upstairs. The chest next to your bed."
He took the stairs two at a time, cursing his weak, aristocratic body. He burst into the bedroom and lunged for the wooden crates.
First chest: clothes. Second: books. Third—
The Magitech Rifles.
Twelve of them lay nestled in oil-cloth. They were heavier than they looked, their barrels thick and etched with runic circuits. A palm-sized magi-crystal, the color of rusted iron, was embedded in the side of the receiver.
He grabbed a rifle and two boxes of metal-cased cartridges and sprinted back down.
When Kyle reached the clearing, the fight was failing.
Renard was backed against the ancient tree, his left arm bleeding freely where the wolf had grazed him. The beast was circling, its left front leg hobbled from a strike, but its madness was undiminished.
It lunged again—a full-body assault.
Renard caught the beast's jaws on the crossguard of his sword. The screech of teeth on steel was deafening. But the wolf's weight was too much. Renard was pinned against the trunk, the beast's foul, rotting breath hot against his face.
"Highness!" Renard roared, his arms shaking with the effort of keeping the jaws from his throat. "Fire!"
Kyle dropped to one knee, bracing the rifle against his shoulder. His finger brushed the magi-crystal on the side. It was burning—not with heat, but with a stinging, electric prickle.
He didn't know how to aim. He only had the theory from the original Kyle's memories: *Pull the trigger, the crystal releases Origin energy, the runes accelerate the bolt.*
The wolf and Renard were a blurred mess of gray fur and steel. He couldn't risk a headshot.
*The shoulder.*
He squeezed the trigger.
A bolt of dark crimson light tore from the barrel with a sharp, hissing crack—the sound of air being shredded. It struck the wolf's right shoulder, punching a thumb-sized hole through the rot. The beast shrieked—a sound so high-pitched it made Kyle's ears ring—and its grip loosened.
The wolf turned. Its yellow eyes locked onto Kyle. Even with its shoulder smoking and charred, it launched itself at him.
Three legs. It was still fast.
Kyle's fingers fumbled. He didn't know how to reload. The wolf was ten paces away. Eight. Five.
He saw the blood. The teeth. The strands of black saliva.
He didn't run. He knew he couldn't outrun it. He braced the stock against his collarbone and pointed the muzzle at the center of that yellow glow.
He pulled the trigger.
The second bolt struck the wolf's left eye socket. It didn't just penetrate; it tore through the back of the skull in a spray of black ichor and bone fragments. The wolf's body spasmed mid-air and crashed into the mud three paces from Kyle's feet.
Its limbs twitched once. Twice. Then it went still.
Kyle remained on one knee, the rifle still pointed at the carcass. His ears were ringing. His hands were shaking. His knees felt like water.
He stood up slowly. The wolf's body was already beginning to wither—the fur losing its sheen, the muscles shrinking as the corruption within began to consume the remains.
"Highness."
Renard was leaning against the tree, his face as white as a sheet, clutching his mangled arm. He looked at the smoking hole in the wolf's head.
"The second shot," the knight wheezed. "Not bad."
The townspeople began to emerge.
There was no cheering. There was only a grim, practiced silence. They didn't look horrified; they looked weary. They had seen this before.
Men came out with burlap sacks and rope. They approached the dead man by the fence, covered his face, and lifted him onto a plank. They moved with a mechanical, numbing efficiency.
No one cried. No one screamed. They just worked.
The boy by the wall was the last to be moved. An old man bent down, gently straightened the child's limbs, and closed his eyes. The gesture was tender, like tucking a child into bed, but the man's face was a mask of stone.
"Highness," Olde said, approaching Kyle. "We must burn them."
Kyle looked at him. "We don't bury them?"
"No," Olde said tonelessly. "Those killed by Aberrants carry the Breath. If we bury them, the rot seeps into the soil and the water. We burn."
The pyre was a crude affair—dry wood and lamp oil. Olde lit the fire himself. The flames licked at the bodies, and soon the air was thick with the sweet, metallic stench of burning flesh and cloth.
Kyle stood by the fire, watching the bodies warp and blacken in the heat. His stomach churned, but he forced himself to look.
"Renard," Kyle said quietly.
"Yes, Highness?"
"The militia soldier who died today. What was his name?"
Renard paused. "Todd. Todd White. Thirty-one. He served with me for five years."
"Remember it," Kyle said. "The town will provide for his family."
Renard looked at him. "Highness, we have no money."
"Record the debt," Kyle replied. "We will pay."
As the fire burned down, Kyle turned his gaze to the north. The Ashwood was a jagged silhouette against the rising sun.
"The wolf," Kyle muttered. "They hunt in packs."
Renard's brow furrowed. "You think there are more?"
"If one got through, more are watching," Kyle said. "This wasn't a raid. This was a probe."
He gripped the cold metal of the magitech rifle. He realized that the town was no longer just a place on a map or a project for survival. It was the wide, gray eyes of that boy.
The beast was in the dark. It was watching. And Kyle knew it wouldn't wait for the snow to melt.