The night dragged on, stretched thin beneath the weight of the full moon. Its pale light spilled across the camp, washing the earth in silver and shadow. Smoke from the dying bonfire coiled upward, carrying the stench of charred flesh and blood, clinging heavy in the lungs like an omen that refused to leave.
The tribe had begun to scatter, their laughter fading into murmurs as sleep tugged them away. Yet the echoes lingered, ghostly as though the soil itself remembered their jeers. Only the chains creaked in the silence, swaying faintly in the night breeze, whispering of pain and defiance.
Veythor hung suspended in that silence, his body a dark silhouette against the wavering glow of embers. Upside down, he was neither child nor prisoner, but something caught between predator and prey, the kind of creature that belonged to no category the tribe had words for.
