The forest loomed ahead, its periphery marked by a well-worn footpath, the earth packed firm from years of use. The trees bore signs of careful tending—coppiced and pollarded, shaped by steady hands. A managed wood.
The realization settled in as he walked. A garden, in all but name. Not wild, but shaped by careful hands.
To see it in practice was a novelty. As a man of a different age—where urbanization and digitization had long overtaken the natural world—he found something almost surreal in its simplicity. He had studied history, of course, though his interests leaned more toward war and its lessons than forestry. Yet even he could appreciate the quiet efficiency of it.
Oh, he had seen nature in order before. Eco-domes spanning cityscapes, great biospheres of glass and steel recreating lost environments in artificial perfection. From the Appalachians to the deserts, from high peaks to frozen tundras, humanity had caged the world's beauty, preserving it even as they erased it elsewhere.
But here—this ordered chaos, this slow, deliberate shaping of land by hand and season—this was different.
A flicker of movement ahead snapped his focus back. The underbrush thickened, the path narrowing as civilization dwindled behind them.
Now, they were stepping into the wild.
Small game stirred in the canopy above, the rustle of leaves lost beneath their measured advance.
The bowman from earlier took point, guiding those with similar arms. A skirmish line formed—loose but deliberate—extending to the flanks as he retraced his steps to the dead lamb's remains. Behind them, the main column followed, six in all, with the chief and the man in the raised visor at the very front.
The forest folded around them, the air thick with damp earth and greenwood. Despite the weight of arms and armor, they moved with practiced silence, the noise of their passage barely a whisper against the forest's song.
Then—a signal.
The bowman raised his hand, fingers splayed. The line slowed, then halted.
Without hesitation, the group adapted. Some knelt, others slipped into the nearest cover, blending into the woodland as instinct took hold. He followed their lead, sinking low, listening.
The forest breathed, but nothing felt out of place.
Ahead, the bowman moved. He and another pressed forward, advancing in measured steps, their bodies coiled with quiet focus.
They vanished briefly beyond the undergrowth. Then—movement.
The second man reappeared first, eyes flicking over their surroundings as he watched their rear, an arrow already knocked. A moment later, the bowman emerged at a brisk pace, heading straight for the chief.
He spoke in hushed tones, his face taut.
The chief's expression darkened. His next words were just as curt.
"We move. Now."
The formation shifted—inverted now. The chief led the way, the bowman falling to the rear with the others, covering their retreat.
What had he seen? What happened? No answer came. Only movement—urgent, unrelenting. Whatever it was, they had to move. And fast.
He didn't question it further, keeping pace as their movement quickened, eyes and ears fanning out.
Then—a sound.
It prickled at the base of his skull, crawled along his spine—not fear, but recognition.
An eerie familiarity.
Stories. Old stories from home. The deep woods, the cries in the dark. A figure slipping between the trees. Your name upon distorted echoes of something… wrong.
Woe to those who answer. You never heard it—yet it was waiting.
The others felt it too, but their fear was different. Instinctual. Primal.
His was understanding.
But now was not the time to dwell. A plan was already forming.
Silence.
Then—a lamb's cry.
Not quite. Close. But wrong.
A ripple of realization passed through the party. Recognition. Horror.
Their pace doubled—no longer a retreat, but a flight. As if they were trespassers whipped from a home they should have never entered.
They did not stop.
Not at the periphery of the forest, where the underbrush gave way to the first traces of civilization. Not at the boundary where their world should have been safe.
The noise followed. Desperate. Insistent.
For flesh.
Only when the stacks of smoke from the village rooftops came into view did they slow—breathless, weary, but not broken.
And yet, they did not let their guard down.
A perimeter formed.
No one spoke.
They would not be caught unchallenged.
Not by this horror.
Their return was met with the blare of horns from deep within the village—sharp, urgent. Voices followed, calls carried across the open space. Their flight had not gone unnoticed.
Still arrayed in formation, they did not break, did not yield. Eyes remained fixed on the treeline, weapons in hand, waiting for pursuit that did not come.
A woman broke from the village proper, striding toward them with a spear in hand, the semblance of armor hastily donned. Her gaze swept over the group, noting the breathlessness, the tension still coiled in their stances.
"What happened?" she asked, her voice edged with concern. "The alarm was raised—we saw you running."
No answer came.
The Chief's eyes remained locked on the forest's edge, searching for something unseen, something that lurked just beyond the veil of shadow and bough. Looking. Waiting. For what, she did not know.
Silence stretched, heavy. Only when their breath had steadied, only when the world settled into uneasy calm, did the Chief finally speak.
"A meeting is in order."
They gathered at the center of the Rundling, where the village's heart lay beneath the great tree. Wolfram took his place at its base, resting a hand against the bark as he surveyed those assembled.
From the periphery, the stranger watched.
Elders, mothers, woodsmen—those who could be spared were here. Children lingered at the edges, their curiosity outweighing the weight of the moment. A few of the youngest pointed his way, whispering, eyes alight with wonder at the unfamiliar figure standing apart.
The man in the visored helm was here. The bowman as well, along with a woman clad in gambeson, a crossbow slung across her back and a sidearm at her belt.
Pleasantries were exchanged, as custom dictated. Then, with a nod from Wolfram, the bowman stepped forward. His voice carried the weight of someone who had seen too much but had no choice but to speak.
He began with the tracks. Faint, scattered, as though the land itself wished to erase them. The lamb's remains—bones stripped clean, not a scrap of flesh left, and not a trace of blood. Whatever took it had left no sign of struggle.
"It was careful," the bowman said. "Too careful."
The silence that followed was expectant, pressing. He hesitated before continuing.
"We heard it."
A shift ran through the gathered men and women. A tightening of shoulders. A glance toward the trees.
"It called," he said finally, his voice lower now. "Not to us. It called like a lamb—but it wasn't."
A long, slow exhale passed through the crowd. No questions. No need.
There were stories.
This side of the Azerlisia Mountains, among those who had reason to name it, two monikers endured. The Hollowed Hide. The Thing That Calls.
The creature that should not be named, lest it be called.
It did not often hunt men. It rarely preyed on men. Rarely. But never? Never was a promise it did not make.
The silence did not last long. A man spoke first—to leave it be, to remain vigilant but not provoke it. The risk, he argued, was low. It had never come for them before. Others had, but not this. And perhaps its presence, for all its horror, would serve as a ward against worse things.
But another rebuked him. To leave it to its own machinations invited only peril. A mother echoed the sentiment, her words plain: "It has no pact with us. It takes. And one day, it may not take only livestock."
The woodsmen, for their part, dismissed the fears. "We work the land. We know its dangers," one said, neither boasting nor scoffing. "This will not stop the axes from falling."
The discussion moved between them, measured but firm.
At the edge of it all, the stranger remained still. Watching. Listening.
A plan was forming.
He knew this creature. Not by legend, not by whispered fears of those who lived beneath its shadow. He had seen it move in the distance. Had heard the sound it made. Had felt the distorted mimicry crawl beneath his skin.
He had fought this thing before.
It was a monster of Yggdrasil. One that lurked on the Midgard server, a high-level predator against which most struggled—a test of endurance, of learning its evasions, its ruthless, high-damage strikes. In Svartalfheim, it was something else. Lesser, but still formidable. A creature that yielded rare materials to those who could best it.
He always found it harder to track there. Patch notes had said as much.
A light tug at his sleeve pulled him from his thoughts. He turned—to find wide, curious eyes staring up at him.
"Who are you?" the boy asked. "What did you see? Why are all the grown-ups so serious? Is something wrong?"
The boy—Young, perhaps no older than six or seven, his face round with the last vestiges of childhood.
He knelt, slow and measured.
"What's your name?"
The child shifted before answering, voice quiet, hesitant. "Tomas."
The stranger nodded.
"No matter," he said simply. Just a little pest to deal with.
Then, he reached into the unseen. The void shimmered, barely perceptible, and from it, he pulled a small stuffed animal—an old, forgotten trinket from a distant life. A fox, small enough to fit in a palm.
Tomas's eyes flickered with momentary awe as the toy was offered. A peace offering, a gift, a simple thing.
Then, he rose.
His eyes lingered on the child only for a moment before turning away. The plan was set. He only needed to execute it.
Without hesitation, he stepped toward the gathered crowd—toward the heart of their discussion, the thread of voices growing heated in their politeness.
He would not wait.
He spoke.