Snow lay thick upon the village, packed hard by weeks of wind and footfall. Roofs sagged beneath white weight, and the longhouses breathed smoke into the low sky as if the settlement itself were alive, exhaling slowly against the cold. Beyond the timber palisade, the frozen river cut through the land like a pale scar, its surface locked in ice so clear that dark water moved beneath it, restless and unseen.
Chris stood at the edge of the practice yard, unmoving.
He was no older then twenty, and was already taller than most, broad through the shoulders, built as if the cold had shaped him deliberately. His hair hung heavy and dark, the color of wet ash after a fire dies, tied back to keep it from his eyes. A short beard shadowed his jaw, kept trimmed more out of habit than vanity. His eyes were the most unsettling thing about him. Sharp. Still. They watched the world without flinching, as if nothing in it had ever surprised him.
Steel rang behind him as younger men clashed axes and shields, their breath bursting white into the air with each shout and strike. The sound carried across the packed snow, echoing off timber walls and frozen ground. Chris did not turn. He listened without seeming to listen, weighing the rhythm of blows, the scrape of boots, the way one fighter's stance faltered just before another pressed the advantage.
A boy stumbled and fell. Laughter followed, quick and cruel in the way of youth. Chris finally moved.
He crossed the yard in long, unhurried strides, boots crunching softly where others stamped. The laughter died as he approached. The boy scrambled to his feet, cheeks burning redder than the cold alone could explain.
"Again," Chris said.
His voice was low, steady, carrying no anger and no comfort. Just certainty.
The boys squared up once more. This time, Chris watched closely. He corrected a grip with two fingers. Shifted a shoulder with a nudge. When the clash came again, it was cleaner, stronger. The boy held his ground.
Chris nodded once and stepped away.
From the edge of the yard, whispers followed him like drifting snow.
"There goes Chris the Fearless…"
"…never seen him lose."
"…fought three men last spring and walked away smiling."
He did not react. He never did.
The village lived by routine, and winter sharpened every habit. Hunts went out at dawn, men moving through pine and frost with bows slung low and spears wrapped in leather to keep fingers from freezing fast. The forest creaked and groaned under ice, branches snapping without warning, the sound like bones breaking somewhere just out of sight. When game was brought down, blood steamed against the snow, dark and thick, and no one looked away. Hunger allowed no weakness.
At night, the mead halls filled with firelight and voices. Flames leapt in stone hearths, licking smoke up through roof vents while shadows danced along carved beams. Cups passed from hand to hand. Laughter rose, deep and rough, then softened into song. Elders claimed the places closest to the fire, their faces lined like old bark, eyes reflecting orange light as they spoke of gods and monsters, of battles fought long before any living man had drawn breath.
Chris listened from the edges.
He drank, but never to excess. He smiled when the moment called for it, but his attention always drifted beyond the walls, beyond the warmth. He had grown up on these stories. He knew how they ended. Glory carried a cost. Victory demanded blood. And the past, no matter how honored, never stayed buried.
Outside, the wind howled across the river, dragging thin sheets of snow across the ice in long, whispering trails. Somewhere far off, wolves called to one another, their voices stretched and hollow, echoing through the dark. The sound set men's hands tightening around cups and hilts alike.
Chris felt it settle into his bones.
Not fear. Anticipation.
He had always been like this. As a child, while others clung to their mothers during storms, Chris would stand at the doorway and watch the sky tear itself apart. While other boys flinched at their first taste of blood, he studied it, noting how quickly it cooled, how the smell changed once it hit the snow.
The elders had noticed early. So had the warriors.
By the time his voice had deepened and his shoulders broadened, no one questioned his place among them. He led hunts with quiet efficiency, tracked wounded animals through blinding snowfall, and returned with fewer men lost than any other. In battle drills, he never overextended, never wasted motion. When pressed, he struck with brutal precision.
Fearless, they called him.
But fearlessness was a poor word for it. Chris did feel fear. He simply did not let it rule him.
On the day everything began to change, the sky hung low and heavy, swollen with the promise of more snow. Chris led a small hunting party beyond the river, following tracks too large to belong to deer and too deep to be anything but fresh. The forest was silent in the way only deep winter could manage, every sound swallowed by frost.
They found the first body near dusk.
It was a wolf, or what might once have been one. Its limbs were twisted at impossible angles, fur matted with frozen blood that glimmered black in the fading light. The head had been torn nearly from the body, jaw snapped wide as if in a final, soundless scream.
The men exchanged uneasy glances.
"This isn't right," one muttered.
Chris knelt beside the carcass. He touched the blood with a bare finger. It was already cold, but not long dead. His eyes traced the marks in the snow, the deep gouges, the way the ground had been churned as if by something far heavier than any wolf they knew.
"Stay close," he said.
They did. For a time.
The forest closed in as night fell. Shadows deepened between the trees, and the moon climbed, pale and distant, its light fractured by branches heavy with snow. The wolves came without warning.
They burst from the darkness in a blur of motion and sound, eyes glowing with an unnatural light, bodies larger than any wolf had a right to be. Their snarls carried something wrong in them, a wetness, a hunger that went beyond flesh.
Steel flashed. Men shouted.
Chris moved like a force of nature, axe rising and falling, every strike purposeful. He felt teeth rake across his arm, felt bone give beneath his blade, heard the crack and scream as one beast fell. Another leapt for his throat. He caught it midair, drove his weapon up beneath its jaw, and wrenched it free as the body collapsed.
But there were too many.
One by one, his companions fell. Screams cut short. Blood sprayed hot against the cold, turning snow into mud beneath stamping feet. Chris fought until his arms burned and his lungs tore at the air, until his vision narrowed and the world became nothing but movement and threat.
When dawn came, the forest was silent again.
Chris stood alone among bodies, human and beast alike, steam rising from the carnage. His wounds ached, deep and ragged, but he remained standing. He always did.
He returned to the village with blood stiffening his clothes and frost clinging to his beard.
What he found there was worse.
Longhouses burned low, their frames blackened and split. Smoke drifted across the settlement, thick and bitter, stinging his lungs as he moved through the ruins. Doors hung open. The ground was torn with footprints that did not belong to wolves.
Rival tribes. Raiders.
Bodies lay where they had fallen. Friends. Elders. Children.
Chris knelt beside the remains of the mead hall, his hands shaking for the first time in his life. He pressed his forehead to the frozen earth, breathing in ash and blood and grief until it felt like his chest might split.
He did not scream.
Survival, it turned out, was a curse.
His wounds did not heal as they should have. Days passed, then weeks, and scars closed too fast, skin knitting with an unnatural speed. Hunger gnawed at him constantly, a hollow ache that no amount of meat could satisfy. At night, his dreams filled with moonlight and running, with the sound of his own heartbeat pounding like war drums in his ears.
The first transformation came without mercy.
Pain tore through him, bones stretching and breaking, muscles twisting beneath his skin. He clawed at the ground, teeth grinding as his body betrayed him. When it ended, he lay in the snow, breath coming in ragged pulls, his senses sharper than they had ever been.
He smelled the world. Heard it. Felt it pulse around him.
And when danger came again, he did not run.
The kill was swift. Instinctive. Complete.
Under the moon, Chris became something else. Something ancient and violent and undeniable.
Still, darker forces watched.
On a night soaked in silver light, as he stood among the aftermath of another battle, a figure emerged from the shadows. Pale. Ageless. Eyes like pits of endless hunger. The Original vampire moved faster than thought, fingers piercing Chris's throat, tearing life from him in a rush of cold fire.
Death should have followed.
It did not.
The wolf curse did not break. It evolved.
Chris awoke in darkness, his heart silent, his blood changed. He was neither wolf nor vampire, but something forged in the space between. A hybrid. Immortal. Cursed beyond measure.
Time lost its meaning.
He walked through centuries as others walked through seasons. He fought beside mortals, led them, saved them, and vanished before they could age beside him. He watched kingdoms rise and fall, watched humanity reach for greatness and drag itself into ruin.
Always, he remembered the snow. The smoke. The sound of steel ringing in the cold.
Always, he hunted.
Chris the Fearless became a shadow whispered through ages, a warrior without a home, a monster who still remembered what it meant to be human. And as the world turned and turned again, his vengeance remained unfinished, burning brighter with every passing year.