Hidden Blood Part 10

The sound came again—deliberate this time. Not the careless crack of night-creatures or the settling of cold wood, but a pause, a pressure, as though the forest itself were holding its breath and then letting it go wrong.

Thygon rose.

He did it without haste, the way men do when they have already rehearsed the moment a hundred times. The fire died beneath his boot with a hiss, ash blooming…