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 briefly before the dark swallowed it whole. In the sudden absence of flame, the hollow felt wider, emptier—exposed.

“Stay where you are,” he said quietly.

Anise didn’t move. She only nodded, though every instinct screamed to follow, to see. Whatever stalked the treeline had carved itself into her imagination already, fed by the map of scars she couldn’t unsee.

Thygon stepped backward into shadow, becoming less a man and more an absence shaped like one. The forest accepted him too easily. That, more than anything, frightened her.

Minutes stretched. Or seconds. Time lost its edges.

Then she felt it—an awareness brushing against her own, like fingers skimming silk. The signet beneath her ribs pulsed once, sharp and warning. Not hunters. Not animals.

Something old.

The air thickened, carrying a scent she didn’t recognize: iron and damp stone, memory rather than place. The trees creaked—not from wind, but from weight, as though something tall and patient had leaned too close.

A shape moved between the trunks.

Anise’s breath caught.

It didn’t advance. It observed.

She understood then what Thygon had meant about patterns. The thing wasn’t searching wildly. It was confirming. Counting. Waiting for certainty.

From somewhere to her left came the faintest sound—a shift of leather, the whisper of steel drawn slow to avoid song.

Thygon had circled.

The realization steadied her. Fear sharpened into focus. Whatever this was, it was not meeting him by accident.

The shape took one step forward.

And Thygon stepped out of the dark behind it.

His voice, when it came, was calm. Almost gentle.

“You’re late,” he said.

The forest seemed to recoil.

Anise pressed her hand to her chest, heart hammering, as the truth finally settled—not as dread, but as grim clarity.

This was not a chance encounter.
This was a reckoning.

And dawn, when it came, would not find the woods unchanged.