Dominic had never seen people so calm while death hid among them.
By the fourth toll of the Spiral Bell, another villager had vanished. It was the same signs: no broken doors, no screams, no struggle On every wall, the same mark, scratched or painted thick and red: ꩜. The Spiral.
By the fifth day, he saw the mark everywhere. At first, it had been hidden. But as patrols and crop counts carried him across the village, his eyes adjusted and saw it. Spiral marks covered everything: carved into trees, burned into the soil, branded onto animals. Some fresh. Some older than anyone could remember.
The people bore them as well. Children had spiral tattoos etched onto their cheeks. The farmers carried sigils that cut too deep into skin. Mothers hummed spiral songs as they boiled herbs.
One turn for memory…One turn for bone…One turn for every name...the Spiral takes for its own…
Well, at least someone's cheerful. Even if it's a cheerful horror cult, Dominic thought with a crooked grin.
He began tracking movement, not their bodies, but their eyes. The window into the soul. They watched him. Not like how they would watch an outsider, nor like a guard. Not even like a threat. They watched him like a clock ticking down to an inevitable strike.
Children whispered as he passed.
"Spiral-guard… Spiral-guard… keep them from running…"
Elders touched his shoulder, muttering blessings. One even dragged a bloody finger across his temple with a smile.
They weren't afraid of the Spiral. If anything, it seemed like they were feeding it.
On the sixth night, the sky tore open. Clouds spun in circles. Red light bled across the stars like a wound. The Spiral Bell rang twelve times in a single breath.
A woman vanished. Again.
The villagers didn't flinch. They didn't check. They just kept chanting. Some even smiled.
That same night, the elder summoned Dominic to the Spiral Plaza. She stood barefoot in ashes, robes layered with dried herbs and bone charms. Behind her, the twenty prisoners waited. Their collars were gone, chains hanging loose at their wrists. Eyes wide with fear, confusion, and disbelief.
They looked at Dominic. But instead Dominic didn't flinch, he felt something was … wrong.
"Is this a transfer?" he asked with his left hand brushing his belt.
The elder smiled, toothless.
"No. It is the Spiral's call. Your father followed… so you should too."
Around them, villagers formed a circle. Men, women, children, all waiting as if one was waiting for a show. The Spiral Bell tolled again deeper and heavier.
"It is time," she said. "The impurities must be sent to the forest."
Whoosh—
A cold wind blew past. Then the spiral etched into the floor glowed subtly like molten iron.
Dominic stepped back. "I'm not a prisoner."
"No," she whispered. "But you walked with them. Guarded them. Watched them. The Spiral saw you."
A dozen hands reached toward him. The other guards hidden behind the crowd were waiting for slip-ups.
Dominic drew his blade, but stopped. Not from fear but from clarity.
The trial couldn't be survived just by waiting.
He wasn't chosen.
He was being offered.
They had never planned to test him. They planned to spend him.
At dawn, they marched.
No weapons. No water. No prayers.
Just twenty-one chained bodies, accompanied by spiral chants from villagers.
We circle the circle,
We tighten the ring,
We give what we were.
To the waking thing.
Spiral hear us.
Spiral claim us.
Spiral bind us.
Spiral tame us.
Echoed around them as they marched towards the forest.
A forest that stank of rot and waited like a predator.
Dominic walked at the back of the line. Cuffs bit into his wrists. Sweat clung as suspicion burned until it hardened into grim certainty.
To the villagers, this forest was holy. The Maw of the Spiral.
To him, it was death wrapped in ferns, dressed in decay. The source of it all.
"If this is their idea of cleansing," he muttered bitterly, "I don't want to see their hell."
The forest began to change after the second mile. Bark turned gray. Leaves crumbled to ash. Light dimmed, though the bloody sky above was clear. The canopy swallowed time. No one knows how much time had passed. One moment, the sun was high; the next, twilight slid through.
Dominic tracked everything instinctively: a stone ridge by a split trunk, with moss clinging to it's roots. Not just his instincts but he felt the memories of the hunter's son inside him guiding his every step.
Follow shadow, not sound. Track signs. Use cover. Conceal yourself.
Memory cut deep when survival actually demanded it.
The first death came quietly. A snap of wood, a grunt. A prisoner vanished. There was no scream, no blood. Only a branch swinging in a direction that went against the wind. Then the smell hit.
It was neither the smell of rot nor waste.
It was like death, cold, heavy and ancient.
The second death was quite loud.
Crash—
A growl, half-beast, half-landslide. Karlan, the smuggler, was hurled into a tree with a crack sound of bone and bark, while his arms separated from him were still in the cuffs.
His blood splashed unto the person next to him who let out a bloodcurdling scream at the next moment.
Panic spread like wildfire over dry grass.
Those that could escape from their chains tried others who couldn't left to their fate.
Dominic dropped behind a trunk, his heart pounding. Then he saw it.
Something moved from shadow into shape.
The Tarrasque.[1]
Its head like a lion's skull fused with armor, jagged bone jutting through blistered scales. Snout plated, built to crush stone to powder. It's serpentine eyes burned like molten coal trapped in tar. They never blinked. With malice etched into it's bones, while hatred thrived within them.
It's breath reeked of rot and fire. It's limbs were thicker than most trees in the forest. It's tail were like a serpent's whip dragging trenches. It's mouth were wide enough to swallow a man, teeth blackened with centuries of kills.
It didn't charge. It just watched.
It wasn't hungry. It was hunting for sport.
The third prisoner bolted. Three steps and that was all.
The Tarrasque slid through trees like a shadow. One claw sliced through the man's chest.
Thud—
His body fell in halves. The bloody smell in the air intensified, The forest were painted with an extra colour of red even with the one from the sky.
Seeing the beast, Dominic muttered under his breath, "Not hungry… just sadistic." Then, cursing his luck, he added, I should have seen this coming. Every life I've lived ends in chaos, yet here I am again.
Those thoughts didn't stop his hands. He moved fast, fumbled in his boot, fingers closing on the handmade lockpick. I guess paranoia had its uses.
Metal scraped, twisted. Click. Right wrist free. Another twist. Click. Left wrist free.
He slammed a rock against his ankle shackles until the iron cracked. The blacksmith never saw this move coming.
"Move!" he barked, dragging two prisoners behind a thicket.
The rest scrambled free, screaming.
The Tarrasque didn't chase. It herded. Each step heavy, precise, driving them east toward cliffs. Toward the ridges Dominic half-remembered from the memories of the hunter's son.
Despairing comments coming from the prisoners.
One said in mid gasps. It knows the land. It's playing us.
Another replied with his eyes clouded with despair. It's not a beast. It's a friggin killer.
By nightfall, ten were dead.
Dominic sat by a creek veiled in mist, his eyes were scanning the treeline. Three others huddled close: Kiran, Vel, and a mute boy. He had to look at him twice. It seems the quiet ones were often deadlier than the loud ones.
Seven others were deeper in brush, dead or turning on each other. He didn't care.
His hand pressed to the dirt, while making calculations and simulations based on the memories he received. He could see a cliff near the rocks, stones buried deep in the sand. He smiled like a dying man watching an executioner stumble.
"You want a dance?" he whispered. "Then dance with this daddy, monster."
The next day, the survivors built camp out of necessity.
It wasn't a real shelter. It was just three rotted logs leaned into a triangle. And a fire pit that barely held any warmth.
One prisoner called it Sanctuary. Dominic called it future ash.
After further introductions from people who who thought keeping to themselves might keep them safe, they made weapons. Sharp sticks. Whittled bone. A spear with a bent, rusted blade lashed with frayed rope. Someone found an old oil flask, with still a little liquid inside.
"Fire. Oil. Sharpened stakes. Desperation," Dominic muttered. "That's the plan."
The others believed him instantly. Death has a way of making fools follow orders. Dominic needed them to think he believed too.
At dusk, the first real test came. They baited the beast with shouting and blood smeared across a tree.
The Tarrasque arrived slowly, like a god inspecting its garden.
They attacked it with fire, oil, sharpened wood, raw rage.
The beast laughed at their actions. Not with sounds but with it's actions and it's patience. It's face seemed to mock them.
Prey trying to act tuff huh?
Two died. Burnt. Crushed. Devoured. One hurled into a tree, limbs misaligned on landing.
The rest ran.
Later, huddled in a sulfurous cave as paranoia grew.
Two prisoners accused the quiet one, Halek, of ruining the fire. They stabbed him while he slept.
Dominic watched not because he agreed, but because observing their betrayals revealed the fractures running deepest.
He did not intervene. He cataloged every move and planned his survival route.
They could do the same to him. Why not act first?
He faked a limp, dragged one foot, and clutched his side. The pain, real enough to sell it.
They whispered behind him. Good. He needed someone greedy enough to act first. "Humans: the most predictable monsters of all."
The next trap used all their supplies: fire, oil, sharpened stakes, and desperation.
But it failed spectacularly.
Three more were gone. One of the cunning ones tried to use the one behind them to stall the beast while he escapes, but the beast was more cunning. Screams echoed into the night. The forest swallowed the bodies.
The Tarrasque didn't just survive. It thrived. Now it tracked them, not by accident but by choice.
Only five remained.
Then came betrayal.
A man named Brann. Sly and quiet.
He offered meat to the others. Dominic did not eat. He acted like he did but buried it beneath the soil when no one was looking.
Brann smeared mud on himself, leaving a bloody trail to the camp. Then he howled into the trees.
The Tarrasque came.
The forest erupted. Trees fell. Blood sprayed like rain.
Dominic ran. He did not look back.
"Idiot thought he could trick that monster so easily," he muttered.
By sunrise, the fires were gone. Plans were gone. Names were gone. But only Dominic remained.
And the thing that would not stop chasing him.
He reached into experience. His own and that of the hunter's son.
The cliff. The Jagged rocks there. It's a natural kill zone.
He hadn't been able to scout it with danger breathing on his neck, but from memories he had done the calculations. Knew the slope, the wind, and the angle to bait the creature.
"You're hungry right?" he muttered to the Tarrasque. "Then come and break your teeth on my grave."
Dominic set his plan in motion. Every shadow, every incline, every snapped branch remembered. The forest itself seemed to obey him, the hunter's son guiding his steps alongside his own instincts.
The cliff waited. The wind, the edge, and the fall. The perfect trap.
And so the final act begins.
[1] A mythological creature. This is an image of the beast. https://share.google/images/cmnr63mbAzPBgKAil