The ridge fell away on either side, its stone spine narrowing until there was nowhere to place a foot without feeling the air on both sides. Each step landed on uneven rock, sometimes sharp, sometimes slick with a thin skin of moss. The ridge narrowed until it felt like crossing the backbones of the earth itself, every step balanced between sky and void.
He kept his weight low, knees bent, eyes tracing the line ahead before committing to the next step. Below, the forest was a quilt of deep green and shadow, stitched together with silver threads of streams. Above, clouds pressed low, dragging their bellies over the higher peaks until the light felt thinner, less certain.
The wind was steady from the north, carrying the scent of pine resin, old rain, and something sharper beneath it. His nostrils flared, sifting the strands—wolf was there, faint but present, and something else he didn't yet have a name for. It prickled in the back of his throat, sour and heavy, not unlike the musk from two nights before. He filed it away the way a hunter files a sound: not urgent yet, but close enough to shape the day.
The ground dropped sharply ahead. He crouched, planting one hand on the stone for balance, and peered down into the gulch. A thin thread of water cut the center, lined with willows and boulders big enough to shelter behind. In the wet soil along the bank, a scatter of tracks broke the surface—deer, fresh, headed downstream. And over them, heavier prints. Too broad for wolf, too deep for a cat.
His stomach tightened. The deer would be meat—real meat—but the bigger tracks warned that he might not be the only one with that thought. Still, hunger had its own law. He slipped down the slope in silence, keeping low, sword loose in his grip. His breath shortened to the work at hand—no future, no past, only the next patch of ground and the next line of cover.
Fifty paces along the bank, movement flickered through the willows—a doe, head down, drinking. Her ears twitched, but she didn't spook. He edged closer, letting the sound of the stream mask his steps. Ten more paces. Eight.
She lifted her head and looked directly at him.
The space between them might as well have been a wall. He knew instantly—she was too far for a sword. His legs could never close that gap before she bolted. He shifted, testing a step he knew he shouldn't take, and the moment cracked. She went in a white flash, tail flagging once, vanishing into the trees, leaving nothing but the soft drumming of hooves fading into the green.
He stood in the empty stillness she'd left behind, jaw tight, the sword suddenly stupid in his hand. "Too slow," he muttered. "Need more reach."
The idea came fast, sharp. A spear. It would give him a chance to strike before a deer could run. He scanned the treeline until he found a length of straight, green pine no thicker than his wrist. The knife bit into it cleanly, peeling bark in long curls that fell like ribboned sap. He shaped the point with slow, deliberate strokes, shaving until the wood took a clean taper. His father's words came with the rhythm of the blade: A weapon's worth is in its edge and its reach—dull and short is just a stick to die holding.
When the wood was honed to a killing point, he hardened it in a low flame, turning it slowly over the coals until it drank in the heat and browned along the grain. Pine smoke threaded his hair and clothes; his eyes watered and then cleared. He tested the tip against his palm—it bit deep enough to draw a bead of blood. Good. Enough.
He set out again, keeping to the deer path, eyes on the churned soil for signs of recent movement. The prints angled uphill, toward a stretch of open ground scattered with boulders like knuckles pushing up from the earth. He slowed, lowering his body's center, moving in arcs instead of straight lines the way he'd seen wolves do. The wind stayed in his favor, sliding past his cheek, cool as a blade laid flat.
Then—there. A buck this time, half-hidden among the stones, antlers like bare branches. It grazed with its head low, ears twitching at the smallest sound; even its chewing had patience.
He sank into stillness, the world narrowing to the deer's shape, the ground beneath his feet, and the beat of his own heart. Earth Elementum wasn't something he called up with thought; it came in the way his weight settled without noise, in how the earth seemed to lend him its steadiness. He let his breath fall into step with the slope. He shifted forward—and the ground shifted with him, a low, solid agreement that rose through his bones.
The buck's head came up, eyes wide, but by then he was already moving. The push came not from his legs alone, but from the slope beneath him, a gathered strength that sent him forward faster than his body could have managed on its own. The spear left his hand as his feet landed, the throw born from the rhythm of the movement, a clean, flat arc that felt chosen rather than thrown.
The point struck just behind the shoulder. The sound was a wet, tearing crack, the animal jolting hard to one side. Hooves hammered stone. The buck screamed—not the clean silence he'd imagined, but a harsh, panicked sound that set his teeth on edge and drove a wedge through the quiet of the valley. Blood came fast, thick and dark, spilling in bursts with each heartbeat, painting the rock in hot ribbons.
He closed the distance before it could regain its footing, planting one knee against its neck and driving the spear deeper, feeling the muscle give way like rope under a blade. The deer's body surged under him, kicked once, twice, then went still, breath leaving it in one long shudder that seemed to empty the world with it.
For a long heartbeat he stayed there, hand tight on the shaft, chest heaving. The blood was hot on his palms; steam lifted in torn veils into the cold. He thought of wolves then—not as hunters to be feared, but as others who knew this heat, this kill, this honest work of teeth and weight and will.
When he rose, the spear was slick to the grip. He worked quickly, cutting deep to open the carcass, steam curling into the wind. The knife slid along familiar lines: belly to sternum, rib to joint, the stubborn places where sinew held as if it had opinions. He set aside what a man can carry and what a man should not—haunch and shoulder and long, clean strips from the ribs went into the doe-hide wrap from his satchel; the rest he left spread and cooling on the stone.
Movement caught his eye on the ridge above—two pale shapes watching, still as frost. The wolves. Not the same pair as before, or maybe the light made strangers of them; it didn't matter. They watched him with the patient authority of the hill itself. He met their gaze for a breath, then dipped his head toward the carcass, shifting his eyes to it, then back to them. An offering, unspoken. He drew his shoulders sideways, not squared at them, the way courtesy looks when it has to fit inside a body. Their ears twitched; they did not move. Whether they understood or only weighed the risk, he couldn't tell. It didn't have to be clear. Some doors open slowly.
He wiped the spear clean in the grass and bound his share tight, the satchel suddenly heavy in a good way. The musk on the wind thinned and drifted, uncertain now that blood had changed the day's grammar. He cut a last strip of meat and placed it far from his own scent, then moved off, taking the higher slope that would leave his trail where the air worked in his favor.
By the time he reached the fold in the rock he'd chosen for camp, the last of the light had gone. He struck flint to steel until a thin thread of spark caught in the dry moss, coaxing it with slow, steady breaths until a flame rose. He fed it in small handfuls, careful not to let it flare too high—enough for warmth, enough for cooking. He set the pan on a bed of coals and listened to the metal's small tick as it woke.
The first strips of venison hissed as they met the iron, the scent rising sharp and wild. Fat popped in the heat, spitting against his wrist. He turned the meat with the point of his knife, watching the color darken, the edges crisp. His mouth watered so hard it hurt; he had to bite the inside of his cheek to keep from tearing at it half-cooked.
When it was done, he ate with both hands, tearing into the meat while it was still almost too hot to hold. Salt and smoke and iron filled his mouth, each bite grounding him deeper in the moment, quieting all the ragged places inside him that had been shouting for days. For the first time in weeks, his belly filled before the food was gone. He leaned back against the rock, chewing slowly now, letting the last of the heat spread through him until his fingers stopped trembling.
Somewhere downslope, a stone shifted. Then another. He glanced toward the kill site, but the ridge above was empty. If the wolves had taken his offer, they had done it without sound. He found himself wondering—had they circled wide to avoid his scent, or had they simply waited until he was no longer watching? The question felt less like doubt than like a new rule he didn't know yet. He could live with that.
The fire's glow softened the hard planes of the rock around him, turning them to bronze and shadow. He stretched his legs toward the warmth, listening to the night settle. No hunger gnawed at him now. His limbs were heavy, loose. The taste of the deer still lingered on his tongue, richer for the knowing that it had been earned. The wind eased; the place seemed to exhale.
A single howl rose somewhere beyond the ridge—low, steady, not calling him and not warning him away. Another answered, farther off, and the shape of their voices made a line he could place himself inside. Between them, in the long pause, he thought he heard the faint crunch of soil under padded feet, slow and deliberate, as if the dark itself were learning to walk around his small light.
He pulled his bedroll closer to the coals and banked them low. His hand rested loosely on the sword, not from fear but from the habit of days that had required it. His thoughts no longer framed the wolves as strangers circling in the dark. If I were them, he thought, I'd keep the ground between us until morning. The thought didn't feel like strategy—it felt like knowing. And as sleep began to pull at him, the last thought he had was not of the deer, nor of the wolves, but of the quiet nod he'd given them—a gesture that felt less like surrender, and more like the opening of a door.
⸻
At dawn, frost clung to the edges of the grass, and the air smelled faintly of iron and musk. He returned to the kill site with his knife ready, though the tension left him as soon as he saw it—the haunches and rib cage were gone, bones scattered in a loose crescent, the drag marks fading into the underbrush. A single paw print sat clean in the patch of dark soil where the blood had pooled, sharp in every edge, as if pressed there on purpose.
He crouched beside it, tracing the outline without touching. No sound came from the trees, no flicker of movement in the mist, but the feeling that someone was still watching stayed with him all the way back to camp. It felt less like being followed and more like being measured, and for the first time in a long while, he found he didn't mind the scale.