The gathering party crept through the deep snow, toward the woods.
"Stay sharp," the chief hissed, his voice barely more than a thread of sound. "The guardian's domain lies beyond. We stop here." He lifted a hand to halt the party thirty paces from the plateau where monsters won't dare approach.
"Stop?" Bryn snarled with suspicion. "Krail, you scheming—"
He shoved forward, closing the distance between them. He checked the chief's gaze, hoping he had misheard him, but the chief didn't flinch; he only nodded.
"No! You swore you'd abandon this!" Bryn's shout splintered through the pines, raw and fierce, carrying no reverence for the man before him. The demand stiffened the party, but no one panicked as if they already knew what was about to come.
"We're at the domain's edge. If the guardian lurks near, what then?"
There was no hesitation in Krail's eyes; he gripped the tilt of his axe, his expression set like a stone. "This is the deep wood, Bryn. Every step forward risks slaughter. Only low-level monsters linger near the slope. Here... we strike."
Bryn's breath came fast, clouding the air around him. "This isn't a hunt—it's butchery!"
The truth of it festered. Bryn had joined this march for precisely this fear—that Krail, revered and obeyed without question, would make good on his ruthless ideology. Survival first, always. No matter the cost. Last winter, he'd commanded ten elders to slit their own throats in the wood, rationing mercy like spoiled grain.
Bryn unsheathed his blade. "You will not bait traps with my men." His head shook as he hissed those words out.
Krail exhaled a long, slow breath, weighted with a reluctant defeat. "No bait from our men."
Then his hand shot forward, a single, unwavering finger stabbing toward Hmu Hmo—the boy stood at the party's edge, melting the snow with his innocent breath. "Him."
Bryn's throat tightened, pulse hammering beneath his skin. Now he understood everything. The reason why Krail had permitted the boy's presence—allowing him to join the gathering—despite his own decree.
No.
Bryn shoved through the men and latched onto Hmu Hmo's wrist. "We're leaving."
Tchk-tchk! Spearheads rattled. The chief's men and Bryn's own had their weapons turned against each other. What was meant for the monsters now sought a different flesh.
"Bryn!" Krail shouted from behind. "This will save the settlement. Would you doom our own instead? Think of Daisy. Think of Dobby!"
Bryn wheeled on Krail, fury igniting his chest like a spark on dry tinder. "Monster! You have not changed since the Red Spring. No wonder he chose you. Was this your plan from the boy's first step into the settlement? To be used as bait?!"
For a heartbeat, something flickered in Krail's frost-pale eyes—guilt, or the ghost of it. A crack in the ice.
Then his jaw set, his breath calmed. When the words came, they were quiet, bitter, even ashamed, but unyielding.
"Only monsters survive in this world."
The words drummed in Hmu Hmo's skull. Only monsters survive. Ironic, isn't it? Perhaps he's the monster they needed—the one who will survive.
He stepped forward.
"I'll do it." No hesitation. No fear. But did he even understand what was coming?
"Fool!" Bryn's grip tightened around his wrist, firm, urgent. "He'll toss you to the monsters!"
Hmu Hmo smiled—a brittle rictus that barely passed for defiance. Then, with a sharp wrench, he tore free.
"I've been a monster's meal before. What's one more feast?"
The lie burned his tongue. Beneath the mask of bravado, his insides twisted, a silent scream buried beneath memory—rending jaws, the village soaked in gore. He gritted his teeth, held the grin, swallowed the terror whole.
And stepped toward the chief.
The chief reached for his hand.
"For Dobby," the boy whispered, placing his hand in the calloused palm.
"Hold the position. Await my signal," Krail ordered as he dragged the boy deeper into the woods. Twenty paces—no more.
Here, by the edge of the woods, beneath the covering of a pine where snow did not touch, he stopped.
His breath misted, and his axe hissed from its sheath.
"Forgive me."
His voice was low and uneven. For the first time, his eyes held something that did not belong to him: remorse.
"When you greet the gods, curse them for me. And never… never… be M'tis again. Better to live a dog than that."
The blade fell.
—
Krail cut off the boy's legs, leaving him to flail in the blood, and retreated up the slope without looking back.
When Hmu Hmo's scream died, the monsters had already gathered, summoned by the aroma of his blood.
Hmu Hmo's teeth shattered as he gritted them, bracing for what was to come.
Slrp!
Their tongues licked across his frostbitten flesh—he choked out a broken giggle. This warmth, he thought, this is how Mother used to bathe—
CRRCK!
A claw impaled his rib cage.
"Grrraaaghhh!"
The giggle curdled into a wet shriek.
Jaws peeled away flesh from his chest in ragged strips, snapping like overstretched rubber. One monster clamped its jaw around his eye socket—CRACK!
He heard the eye fluid squirt as it burst. He felt the optic nerve rip like a rotten root.
They fed leisurely, savoring each muffled crack of bone, each gurgled plea drowned in blood foaming from his windpipe.
His last heave was a haunting rasp as his flesh-ridden fingers scrambled against permafrost, reaching for a phantom of sunlight. The monsters exhaled, steam rising from their mouths as they devoured the last twitching shreds of warmth.
Bryn lunged, but the chief was faster. A calloused palm clamped over his mouth, halting him mid-stride. "Wait," Krail whispered. "Full-grown monsters would shred us. We take the young."
Bryn trembled beneath the restraint; he gritted his teeth as Hmu Hmo's screams dissolved into wet, crackling gulps.
Then silence.
When the monsters retreated, their pups crept forth: wolf cubs with milk teeth stained red, tiger cubs lapping at crimson slush.
Nothing remained of the boy. Nothing, save for chunks of regurgitated flesh, left behind for the young.
The chief's hand slashed downward.
Men erupted from the snow, spears piercing mewling infants. Axes swung wildly, blades sinking into soft fur and fragile skulls. No pause. No mercy. Until the snow lay still.
They hauled twitching bodies toward the mountain, boots sliding on blood-slicked ice.
"Move!" roared the chief. "Before the mothers return!"
None glanced back at the red ruin where Hmu Hmo had knelt.