Put me down

Luna's POV

We left at first light, when the sky was the color of cold iron and the smoke on the ridges looked like sleeping beasts.

Kael chose the team: me, two scouts from the north slope - Rin and Joss - and Lera, the old baker who threw stones like they were arrows. Lera insisted.

“I can still throw,” she said, tying a scarf over her hair. “And my eyes work better than my knees.”

Kael didn’t argue. He only checked the laces on her boots and handed her a shorter spear. “Stay behind me,” he said.

She sniffed. “You wish.”

We moved in a line through the ash pines, close enough to touch, quiet enough to listen.

The ground was soft with gray dust. Faint frost glittered where the sun hadn’t reached. Every step stirred the smell of old fire.

“Here,” Rin whispered.

We gathered around a patch of earth where the ash had been pressed in wide ovals. Claw marks scored the dirt in deep, clean lines. Too deep. Too far apart.

Joss crouched, setting his fingers against the print. His hand looked small inside it.

“That’s… big,” he muttered.

“Bigger than any wolf I’ve tracked,” Rin said. “Even in winter.”

Kael didn’t speak. He just stared at the marks and then at the tree line as if the trees might explain themselves.

I let my fingers hover over the print. The ash felt colder there, as if something had pulled heat out of it. A faint, wrong smell rose - pine sap and metal. I pulled my hand back.

“Look here,” Lera said softly. She pointed with the spear-tip to smaller tracks beside the claws. Boots. Human. The stride was long. The prints were deep enough to show the heel. “They walked together.”

“Or after,” Kael said. “Following the beast.”

“Or leading it,” I said.

Silence settled over those words.

We pushed on. The prints moved through a narrow cut between rocks and down into a shallow bowl where the forest thinned. In places, claw tips had gouged bark. In others, branches had been bent at a height no normal animal could reach.

At one trunk, Rin pinched a tuft of fur from a splinter and held it up. It was black - not dark brown, not gray - black, with a sheen like wet stone.

“Feel,” she whispered, and gave me a single hair.

It cooled my skin where it touched. Not wind-cold. Deep cold. I let it fall and rubbed my fingers against my cloak.

We came to a stream - thin, fast, running clear over pale stones. The prints split there and then reunited on the other side.

Two sets of bootsteps lingered at the bank, turned in circles, then crossed where the water shallowed.

I stepped forward, testing the stones. They were slick with thin ice.

“Careful,” Kael said.

“I’m fine.”

“You’re tired.”

“So are you.”

He didn’t argue. He just turned, crouched a little, and opened his arms like it was the most obvious thing in the world. “Come on.”

“Kael,” I warned, heat touching my neck. “There are people.”

“There’s also a river,” he said, voice mild. “And we don’t need you falling on slick rock when I am right here.”

Rin made a sound that might have been a laugh. Joss looked away very politely and adjusted his pack buckles three times.

I sighed and stepped into Kael’s arms. He lifted me like habit, arms firm at my thighs, my hands finding his shoulders without thinking.

The world tilted, and then it steadied against the steady of him. He waded, careful, boots finding purchase, the water pushing against his calves.

“You know I can walk,” I said, trying to sound put out. It came out soft.

“I know,” he murmured, not looking up. “Let me do this anyway.”

“Practical,” I said.

“Very.”

He reached the far bank and didn’t set me down at once. He kept me there, heartbeat against mine, breath warm at my temple. One beat. Two. Three. The stream gossiped over stones like it had a secret.

“Kael,” I said finally.

“Hm?”

“You can put me down now.”

“Right.” He lowered me like I might break and let me slide slow onto my feet. His hands stayed at my waist a second longer than needed. Lera coughed into her scarf and began examining a rock with great interest.

We followed the prints uphill, the morning sun slipping through black needles in thin bars. The ash thinned where moss clung to stone.

A jay screamed once and fell silent. The world felt like it had pulled its breath in and forgotten how to let it out.

“Here,” Rin said again, this time with a thread of fear.

The tracks cut across a shallow rise where the ground had been disturbed. Not the jumble of a fight. Not the sweep of a run. A steady, marching churn. Claw. Boot. Claw. Boot. A rhythm you could count.

And then a gap where the boots stopped.

The claws continued.

Joss swallowed. “Where’d the man go?”

Lera crouched and felt the earth with the palm of her hand. “Down,” she said. She tapped.

The soil sounded hollow. She shifted her weight and the crust broke, revealing a small sink where the ground had been filled quickly, clumsily, not long ago.

Kael glanced at me. I nodded. He and Joss cleared the shallow cover with their hands - ash, needles, a scrap of torn cloth.

Beneath lay a dark, wide stain that had dried to black. No body. No bones. Just the shape left behind, like a place where the earth had remembered weight.

Rin touched the torn cloth with the tip of her knife. The fabric was rough. It bore a crude red thread emblem near the seam: a broken crown with a crooked stitch.

“Loyalist,” she said.

“Or someone wearing their colors,” Kael answered.

We followed the claw prints higher. The boot tracks returned above the sink, smaller now, like the steps belonged to someone lighter or someone who walked differently.

They crossed the claws and drifted aside, weaving. We traded glances and didn’t say what we were thinking.

It was quiet here. Too quiet. Even the winter insects had stopped their tiny whir. My mouth went dry with it.

“Do you feel that?” I whispered.

Kael nodded once. “Yes.”

“What is it?”

“Wrong.”

We moved slower. Kael loosened his sword. Lera shifted the spear to her other hand.

Joss rolled his shoulders as if to shake off a weight. Rin lifted her chin and took a breath like a swimmer before a dive.

The prints led into a small clearing where the ground dipped and held a dish of old rain. Thin ice skinned the surface, clouded and cracked.

The claws had broken through and left starbursts. The bootsteps skirted the edge and then cut across the bowl where a fallen trunk made a bridge.

Kael lifted a hand to hold us back. He stepped onto the trunk first, testing. It held. He crossed and signaled. I followed, arms out a little for balance. The ice squealed under the bark. I moved faster.

On the far side, a thin spray of black fir needles had been scattered in a pattern that was not wind-made. Five lines, then a cross. A child’s drawing of a crown. Or a warning.

“Someone marked it,” Joss whispered.

“Or something,” Lera said.