I knew something was wrong long before the burning started. The city felt strange that evening, too quiet, like the air was listening. I kept telling myself it was the fog again, drifting in off the water in slow sheets that swallowed the lamps. But the stillness felt heavier than fog. It felt purposeful. My palm began to throb on the walk back. A dull ache, low and rhythmic, like a second heartbeat tapping under my skin. I rubbed it against my coat, trying to make it stop. It only pulsed harder. By the time the lamps flickered on, the warmth had turned into heat. It didn’t make sense. No cut, no bruise, no injury. Just a symbol pressed into my skin earlier that day by the clerk at the registrar’s office, a quick transfer of documents, a handshake I barely noticed. Now it was blooming under my skin. I took a turn down the empty service street behind the bakery. The fog thickened, settling into the stones like wool. My boots echoed too loudly. Every sound felt amplified in the wrong ways. Halfway down the lane, the hair on my arms lifted. Someone was watching me. I spun around. Nothing. Just the fog and the dead windows of the old buildings. I swallowed hard and kept walking, faster now. The heat in my palm crawled up my wrist. Then I heard a soft scrape. Barely a sound. Like claws gliding over stone. I turned again. The fog shifted, and a shape stepped into the street behind me. Too tall with shoulders angled wrong, limbs long and tapered, movements smoother than walking should ever be. Something like a mask clung to its face, a cold, pale thing that didn’t reflect the lamplight but absorbed it. My lungs locked. Two more shapes peeled out from the alley beside it. They didn’t speak. They didn’t breathe loudly enough to hear. They just stood there, perfectly still, heads tilted ever so slightly toward me… as if listening to the pulse in my palm. I took one step back. They moved. Not by walking. Not even gliding. Just a half-meter closer. I ran.

  I don’t remember deciding. My body just snapped free and launched forward, boots hammering stone, breath tearing at my throat. The fog whipped past me as I sprinted down the block, turned hard, nearly slipped. Every few steps I glanced back. They were always closer. Not chasing. Not running. Just existing nearer than they had any right to. Every time my heartbeat spiked, the mark in my palm erupted with heat, and they responded, drawing in like sharks to blood in water. I bolted across the marketplace square, legs burning, chest on fire. My vision swam. I pushed harder. Turn. Turn. Turn. No matter where I went, the fog curled around me like a net. A shadow flickered at my side. I whipped around and saw one of them right behind me, close enough that I could see the texture of a mask fused into the skin beneath. No seams. No eyes. Just a blank, carved face and the faintest red glow pulsing under its ribs. I stumbled backward, slammed into a wall, and pushed off again. My lungs screamed. My legs felt like they were tearing at the joints. I ran until my breath broke, until my body refused, until panic hollowed my bones. The mark blazed. White-hot. Blinding. And the world froze. Not metaphorically. Literally. The fog stopped moving.

  The sounds of the street cut out mid-echo. Even the lamps flickered, and stayed mid-flicker, light suspended in the air like trapped insects. I staggered, dizzy, trying to breathe in a world that had forgotten motion. A shape slid into view ahead of me. One of these monsters. Then another. Then the third. They surrounded me with perfect geometry, closing off every direction without ever seeming to walk. My body knew before my brain did. There was no escape. They didn’t rush. They didn’t posture. They just moved with that same impossible precision, closing off every direction without ever appearing to walk. Fog curled around their legs but never disturbed their perfect formation. My body reacted before my thoughts could catch up. There was no way out. The nearest Hunter reached toward me. Not grabbing. Not clawing. Just the slow, inevitable extension of an arm that didn’t move quite like a human one should. Its joints bent with a soft, wrong elasticity, masked face tilted in blank assessment. I stumbled back, chest tight, breath hitching. The heat in my palm surged like my own blood was warning me. Then one of them tightened its grip on the pole it carried. I didn’t even see the swing, just a blur of pale metal flashing through the fog. A hook punched into my chest with a sound I felt more than heard. A crack. A wet snap. The breath ripped out of me in a strangled gasp as the impact drove me back into the wall. The pain was instant and blinding. Sharp. White. Every nerve screaming. I tried to suck in air, but the hook kept me pinned, the barbed curve buried deep under my sternum. Not enough to kill me, just enough that I couldn’t pull free without tearing myself apart. My hands scrambled at the shaft, slipping on my own blood. The Hunter holding it didn’t react. Didn’t adjust. Didn’t even acknowledge me. It simply bore the weight as if impaling people was a routine task. The other two moved in tighter, masks angled down toward me in eerie unison. No breath fogged the air, no sound escaped them at all. The worst part wasn’t the silence. It was the stillness. They were close enough that I could see the fine cracks in their masks, the faint shimmer of glowdust fused in the seams of their limbs, the dried blood caught under their claws. This wasn’t a mistake. It wasn’t an attack. It was a collection. I tried to force myself off the hook, but the pain tore through my spine, bright and hot, stealing every thought. My knees buckled, and the Hunter lifted the pole slightly to keep me upright. I wasn’t a person to them. I was cattle. The pole jerked once, testing the weight. My body lurched with it. A sickening metal-on-bone grind echoed through my ribs. The fog thickened as they began to move, three silent figures cutting through the night, carrying me as a butcher’s cut hung on a line. My vision blurred at the edges. I tasted copper. My fingers twitched uselessly against the shaft.

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  Brutal, efficient.

  I don’t know how long they carried me. Minutes? Hours? It didn’t matter. Time blurred in the pain. Every jostle of the pole sent a white-hot bolt through my chest, radiating out in ragged waves that made my vision swim. The Hunter holding the shaft kept it propped neatly across its shoulder, my body hanging from it like some grotesque trophy. My arms dangled uselessly. My head bobbed with each step. They moved in a perfect line. No stumbling. No noise. No rush. Just steady, measured steps echoing through the fog-choked alleys. I could hear the scraping of my boots against the stones, dull, rhythmic, like someone dragging a mop. My breath came in shallow gasps. Each one hurt and tasted of blood. The city around us never noticed. Doors stayed shut. Windows stayed dark. This part of town had learned long ago which sounds meant survival. Silence brought safety. Noise brought graves. We passed a street where someone was awake, lights flickering behind a curtain. I tried to make a sound, any sound, but all that came out was wet choking. They didn’t look up. Didn’t hesitate. Didn’t exist as anything but motion and purpose. One of them reached up at one point, not to adjust me, but to press a gloved hand flat against my ribs. The pressure steadied my breathing, not out of care but calculation. Making sure I stay alive for whatever they need me for. Then it pulled its hand away and kept walking. I hung from the pole and let the world smear into fog, stone, and pain. At some point, I blacked out. Not fully. Not clean. Just enough that the world folded, then cracked open again in shards. Dark, light, dark again.

  Voices? No. Footsteps? No. Just the faint creak of the pole shifting with each step. My mind slipped, floating just above my body, disconnected, weightless. Every time consciousness tried to claw back in, pain dragged it down again. I woke once to the sight of a bridge overhead, iron supports dripping with condensation. My blood pooled hot against my side. My fingers twitched. Blackness took me again. Next time I surfaced, we were off the streets. The ground felt different, no more loose stones, no more uneven cracks. Smooth. Cold. A corridor. Enclosed. I heard a door open, metal grinding. They stepped through without breaking formation. I tried to lift my head. Nothing moved. Just a hot trickle of blood down my stomach. Somewhere deep in my chest, something gurgled when I breathed. The last time I woke, the air had changed. It smelled like metal. And flowers. And something sharp and chemical underneath it all. My heart lurched painfully as the hook shifted and I bit down a scream. Everything narrowed as the darkness faded into light, orange, wavering, too warm firelight. They carried me down a sloping tunnel. I felt the angle in the way my weight pulled on the hook, dragging against bone. The walls on either side were rough-hewn stone, slick with moisture. Water dripped somewhere deeper inside, the sound echoing endlessly. The air changed the farther we descended. Damp, cold, and metallic. And underneath it: the sting of old blood. I tried to lift my head and failed. My vision swung in a nauseating arc as the pole shifted on the hunter’s shoulder. The tunnel opened suddenly, widening into a cavern swallowed in shadows and firelight. Torches burned in sconces hammered straight into the rock. Their light flickered across carvings, jagged spirals, horned silhouettes, old runes clawed into the walls like something desperate had made them. My stomach turned. This wasn’t a room; it wasn’t even a chamber. It was a pit, a ritual pit.

  Stepping forward with the same unbroken formation, carrying me toward a stone slab set near the center of the cavern. Not polished. Not ceremonial. Just a block of granite stained so deep it looked black. The edges were chipped from years of use. No one had cleaned this place in decades. Maybe centuries. A shape stood behind the slab. A man in heavy robes, hood down, sleeves stained dark up to the elbows. His hair was graying, pulled back. His expression was flat, detached, like someone looking at a piece of equipment, not a person. He gave a single nod. The monsters responded instantly. The pole was lowered, and my body scraped across the rock as they maneuvered me onto the slab. A fresh bolt of pain screamed through me as the barbs in my chest gouged deeper. I choked on a breath that tasted like blood and stone. The robed man stepped closer, examining me with a slow sweep of his eyes. He pressed two fingers to the side of my throat, checking my pulse.

  “Good,” he murmured. “Still strong enough.”

  His voice wasn’t cruel. It was worse, indifferent. He motioned to two acolytes waiting in the shadows. They stepped forward carrying implements, rusted chains, a bowl carved from bone, a blade the length of my forearm wrapped in linen. The monsters stepped back into the dark, becoming nothing more than three silhouettes watching the proceedings. The acolytes unwrapped the blade. The man spoke again, soft and steady, as if reciting something memorized since birth. “For the Hunt.”

  “For the Blood.” The acolytes answered.

  He placed a hand on my chest, not on the wound, but just above it, feeling the rise and fall of my breath. “You were chosen,” he said. “The family thanks you.”

  I tried to speak, to beg, to scream, but nothing came out. The acolytes took hold of the pole still embedded in me. I felt the shift of pressure. The slight twist.

  “No,” I tried to say, but it came out as a wet rattle. The robed man nodded once. “Remove it. The barbs tore free. My scream finally found its way out, but the cavern swallowed it whole.