Blood Gulch Map Novels & Stories

“I never realized how confined it got in certain areas down here. It’s…pretty creepy.” “I found this route a few moons back. It’s a tight squeeze, but it cuts off a few minutes. Strange, it seems to change a bit each time I’m down here, like a labyrinth whose walls move to trick you. But there’s a reason for going this way: it keeps us from having to traverse Guys Gulch and that rickety rope bridge.” “Guys Gulch, huh? Did you name it or did Tobias?” Gilly smiled without turning. “I am not the name-giver, no. It was named the day after our Ruines Ruse demise, so it seemed fitting at the time.”

"What kind of warning?" Maelis reached into her cloak and withdrew a folded map. The parchment was old and worn, marked with ink in five different colors. She spread it across the table, and I saw the territories outlined in careful detail. Silver Hollow was there. The Gray Reach, far to the north. And five other packs, each one marked in red.

“I know for sure this is for a place or maybe a community, but it is for houses and how they are situated and this one is a road map with just indications. This is looking complicated already. I wouldn't know how I will get a solution to that,” She looked intently and nothing felt familiar about it. She could see it wasn't somewhere she knew but it is significant. The only conclusion she was able to get to was that it might be the Bloodfang Villa map. That's the only thing that makes sense to her and maybe that road map is either how to navigate things or where exactly they will have to go. Calla looked intently at the map with building indications again and she saw there was a marking point

I leaned in closer. He reached for the map spread out on my desk and pointed to a spot marked with a red pen. "The Northern Forest is only twenty miles from this entrance. If my hunch is right, the Ferals are living there, and it's just five miles from their likely base to this weak point." "Oh! That would explain a lot," I muttered, studying the map as pieces clicked into place.

“Ah I see.” He turned the map toward me and began pointing. “There’s the Hollow Pines, they’re elusive but trade sometimes. Then there’s Greyridge, but they’ve let outsiders in now and then. Ironmaw too. But…” I waited, eyes tracking his finger as it hovered above a mountain range. All the packs and regions he was mentioning were familiar to me, I almost gave up when he said something that caught my attention. “…there’s Ashborne Claw.” “Never heard of it,” I muttered.

Good. I slide the stone aside and reach into the narrow compartment beneath. Inside, everything is arranged with the kind of careful precision only the Guild bothers with. Blades wrapped in oil cloth. Glass vials cushioned against impact. A compact tool roll. And a sealed packet. The map. The weight of it settles into my hands, familiar and steadying. The Guild never offers comfort. It offers preparation. Preparation is better. I break the wax seal. The first sheet is terrain. Elevation lines crowd the eastern rise and spread wider toward the hollow valley. Water routes cut thin lines through the map, marked where runoff masks sound.

Maya was beside him with the topographic chart and the carved wolf, tracing the contour lines with the same patient attention she'd given the valley paths an hour earlier. "The trucks are hiding here," she said, tapping a shallow depression on the chart. "And here." Another tap. "Ditches. Low ground. The wolf says low ground is where things hide from things that are looking down at them." Silas checked it against the vibration data. "She's right again," he said, and this time he didn't even bother sounding surprised. He relayed the positions to Garrett, who was running comms for the advancing vanguard. "Two survivor clusters confirmed, low ground, six and seven miles out respectively."

I asked. “Complicated.” She spread the map across a table that had probably been used for mission planning decades ago. “We follow the old patrol path for the first five miles. It’s marked, relatively clear, and designed for Hunters to move through quickly. But after that, we’re in uncharted territory. The map shows approximate locations, but the landscape changes. Anomalies corrupt everything over time.” I studied the route she’d traced in faded red ink. It wound through what looked like a corrupted forest, skirted around several areas marked with warning symbols I didn’t recognize, and ended at coordinates marked with a small gold star.

Through the fated mate bond, I could feel the low, dangerous rumble of Lou pacing within Kaelen’s consciousness, his silver-gray form hungry for the upcoming hunt. Marcus swiped his hand across the air, throwing a massive, three-dimensional digital map into the center of the room. The terrain of the northern crossroads ridge materialized in sharp blue lines, mapping the dense pine forests and steep rocky ravines that separated our territory from my Uncle Victor’s northern sector. But right along the highest peak of the ridge a sector that had been marked as dead space on the regional alliance boards for a decade a cluster of jagged crimson coordinates began to flash.

Swallowing, I snapped the book shut in a plume of dust. “What does it all mean?” Olivia asked, frowning and waving her hand in front of her face to displace the dust. “No one has ever talked about anyone named ‘Edward’. I thought that Edward’s Gulch was just a random name, maybe the name of whoever discovered it.” Edward’s Gulch was a ravine at the top of the town, about a mile behind my parents’ house. No one was allowed there, as it was dangerous. Anyone who was found there would be fined or even thrown in jail overnight.