Krosstoen's mountain was never silent. Birds chirped in the morning, owls hooted at night, boars grunted during the day, and tame winds blew through its old forest, creating an incessant symphony of rustling leaves.
Still, there was a rhythm to that symphony, one that Liam had long since committed to memory. It was the lullaby that had put him to sleep for almost a decade, ever since he had been little more than a child, so he had grown sensitive to any of its wrong notes.
One of those wrong notes reached Liam now, making his ears twitch and awakening him, his black eyes opening to point at the slightly chill, grey morning sky past the leaves above.
'It's going to rain soon,' Liam thought, smelling the humidity in the air.
The rain wasn't a problem for Liam. The mountain was his natural environment, his real home, so he could easily find a resting spot more suited for the incoming bad weather than the thick branch on which he was lying.
Instead, the wrong notes weren't something Liam could ignore. Of the three sets of steps he had heard, he only recognized one, meaning that he had to take care of the other two.
Keeping the mountain safe from foreigners was Liam's self-proclaimed job after all.
'Hunters?' Liam wondered, yawning. 'How can they be nosier than Adrian?'
Moving silently was one of the main requirements when hunting for prey, and those two sets of steps didn't even come close to making the cut. They were so loud that Liam almost second-guessed himself, but the shout that followed brought clear answers.
"This mountain is haunted!" A young voice resounded in the area, coming from the beaten path below. "Haunted!"
Liam snapped completely awake at that keyword. He and Adrian, his childhood friend, had systems to signal hunters and other unwanted foreigners, and that shout was one of them.
Liam abruptly jumped straight, ignoring his perilous location. He had slept on quite a tall branch that night, and falling could outright kill him, but his balance was impeccable, his feet treating it as any other flat surface.
One of Liam's hands went to his long black hair, ruffling it to shed off anything it might have trapped during the night. Leaves, dirt, and dandruff fell from his head while he reached for his knife in the trunk behind him.
Liam retrieved the knife and the patchworked leather quiver with his handful of simple arrows hanging from it, quickly securing both on his ragged robe's belt and back.
Afterward, Liam drew his makeshift bow from his left shoulder, immediately knocking an arrow into it and pulling on its heavy string, only to adjust his aim and release it as soon as another sound of footsteps reached his ears.
Due to the branch's height, Liam could see nothing but leaves below. The few holes in those intricate layers showed the mountain's surface, but they weren't suitable to give a proper view of the ground level.
Nevertheless, the arrow whistled through the air, piercing any leaf on its trajectory, miraculously avoiding any branch or trunk. Liam even heard it stab the ground, as well as the unfamiliar gasps that followed.
Liam had already stored the bow on his shoulder by then. With all his belongings secured, he stepped forward, yawning as he left the safety of his branch.
Gravity immediately did its job, accelerating Liam's free fall, blurring the edges of his vision, and urging his eyes to close to withstand the wind blowing in his face.
However, as the bed of leaves was upon Liam, he stretched his arms, his expert hands finding a branch hidden under the green and yellow layers that turned his fall into an abrupt swing.
Leaves fell everywhere as Liam swung through them, flinging himself toward a more distant tree he couldn't have possibly reached through a simple jump.
More leaves hindered Liam's advance, but his eyes remained open during the crossing, ignoring the snapping branches, darting left and right to find what he knew would serve him perfectly.
Soon, the base of a large branch caught Liam's attention, and his left hand snapped at it, clawing at its bark, his callous fingers scraping through it, turning his forward momentum into a spin.
Liam spun around the branch until his feet landed heavily on its upper side, his knees bending to disperse his momentum. He retrieved his bow before his figure was fully straight, already knocking another arrow in it.
The muscles in Liam's left arm and shoulder tensed while he kept the arrow ready. He held his breath, closing his eyes to focus on his hearing. The previous shot had brought some stillness in the path below, but a faint noise eventually reached his ears, giving him another target.
Liam adjusted his aim and fired the arrow seemingly blind, opening his eyes only when he stored the bow and jumped again, heading for another nearby branch.
A painful cry resounded through the area, but Liam didn't stop. He jumped and swung from branch to branch, avoiding crossing leaves or making noise now, until he reached another tree.
After finding another secure position, Liam drew his bow and knocked an arrow into it, only for reassuring sounds to reach his ears. The two foreign sets of steps were on the move, one limping while they ran down the path.
Liam stored the bow and arrow for good at that point, swiftly climbing down branches until he got low enough to peek past the leaves. He immediately found his childhood friend, as well as the distant silhouettes of two retreating men further below the mountain path.
Once the silhouettes completely disappeared, Liam jumped on the tree's slightly inclined trunk, sliding over it to head directly toward the ground.
Liam slowed down his descent with his hands and feet, the bark unable to scrape past his calluses, but his speed reached dangerous levels nonetheless.
Yet, Liam leaped once the crash was imminent, lightly landing and rolling over the ground to disperse whatever dangerous momentum he had accumulated.
"My feral brother, we did it again!" Adrian, Liam's childhood friend, shouted, running toward him.
Unlike Liam, Adrian had short blonde hair and was taller, but lacked his broad shoulders and overall muscular body. He was sixteen like him, but his grey robe was intact, only stained by the soot from his father's workshop.
The two boys' demeanor was also opposite. The mountain had made Liam silent, while Adrian couldn't stop smiling and talking.
"You must truly have the blood of the Ancestral Ape in you!" Adrian laughed, seizing a leaf still stuck in Liam's messy hair, his nose wrinkling at the stench that assaulted him. "You even smell like a monkey."
Liam ignored the comment and went to retrieve one of the arrows he had fired earlier, checking its integrity before storing it in his quiver. However, when he looked for the second, he only saw the trail of blood left by the man he had hit.
'He let them go away with my arrow again,' Liam cursed in his mind, deciding to address the previous comment. "You have never smelled a monkey."
"I know they move like you, monkey-boy," Adrian argued. "Smelling you counts."
Liam rolled his eyes but didn't add anything. For years, he had been known as monkey-boy among the kids in the village due to how nimbly he navigated the trees, so that veiled insult hardly had any effect.
'This is already the second time this month,' Liam thought, rechecking the trail of blood. 'The other villages must be short on food.'
Krosstoen was only one of the many small villages in that area of the Outer Circles. As such, they were extremely poor, turning the imminent winter into a dangerous challenge.
The villages didn't even have decent connections. The few paths between them were dangerous to cross, so the fact that hunters had traveled for Krosstoen's mountain twice in a month spoke for their desperation.
Yet, Krosstoen's mountain wasn't big. Liam couldn't risk compromising its balance. His father had been Krosstoen's hunter, so that job had fallen on Liam after his tragic death.
Luckily, the village people were easy to scare away. Liam's agility and good aim allowed him to fire arrows with great accuracy from different spots in a short time, giving the impression that the mountain was occupied by more than just him.
'Welcoming foreign hunters might feed the villages for a while,' Liam thought, recalling his father's teachings to push away the bitterness of his realization, 'But the mountain can't take it. If too many animals die, everyone will starve in the next winter.'
"I hit one of their feet, right?" Liam eventually asked.
"Dead center," Adrian confirmed, patting Liam's shoulder.
"They might be staying in the village for a while then," Liam concluded. "It's better if I don't leave the mountain until they are gone."
"Did you forget what day it is?" Adrian scoffed. "The caravan from the Recruiters Guild is here. The two Uncles can follow it back to their village."
"Is the Recruiters Guild here?!" Liam gasped, forgetting about everything else, his black eyes snapping at his friend.
"Yes, my feral brother," Adrian nodded. "Today is the day we find out if we can become cultivators."