The voice did not respond to Icariel's plea.
Of course, he already knew it wouldn't. The voice had never answered calls born from panic. It spoke when it chose—when the moment demanded intervention, when silence would mean death. And it had already spoken today.
[Go left.]
That had been the advice.
The best advice.
The only advice.
And Icariel had followed it at first. He had turned left, pulled Neo with him, avoided the false path that someone had carved into their system. They meet Meron. And then the scream came. Then they ran toward it.
And step by step, choice by choice they had gone right anyway.
Not the right of the false mark. Not the trap that had been laid. But a different kind of wrong. A deeper kind. The kind that came from caring about a scream instead of calculating the odds.
'I overthought everything,' Icariel thought, his bow still raised, his body still frozen.
'Every possibility. Every angle. Every explanation for the mark. But I never thought it would be this bad.'
Because what he was seeing with his eyes was impossible.
The way the trees were cut now made sense. That dark red energy that slash separating Grin in half from a distance. Something that should not be possible had happened right in front of him.
He did believe in the impossible. After all, he had the voice.
But the voice didn't make him strong. The voice didn't give him that.
Whatever those women had unleashed whatever that dark red line had been it was fatal and terrifying.
He exhaled slowly.
'No matter how much I prepared In this short amount of time the unknown got me again.'
After all, he didn't know shit about the two women who had appeared. He didn't know how those bears those things that looked like bears but weren't remained so still, so patient, waiting for orders from their masters like trained hounds. He didn't know their motives. He didn't know how they knew the village's simple marking system.
The theory about knowing the chief… maybe that's true here.
But now he was completely lost drowning in the unknown.
They looked human. But he wasn't sure they were.
So he waited.
His bow raised.
His black arrow nocked but not yet drawn. He waited to see what would happen next.
He couldn't see Neo's face the boy was ahead of him, slightly to the left but he could see him tremble. The axe in his hands shook, just barely, the way steel shivers before it breaks.
Meron's shoulders trembled too.
Then Neo's voice tore through the clearing.
"Who are you?!"
The words cracked at the edges, raw and unsteady.
"What the hell do you want?! Why did you kill him?!"
His voice trembled. His big axe tightened in his hands not with confidence, but with the desperate grip of a man holding onto the only thing between himself and madness.
The two women stood at the bottom of the slope, their heads raised slightly, looking up at them.
Icariel could hear them clearly. Every word. Every breath.
The tall one the ponytail, the orange eyes, the white armor with the dragon etched into its side spoke first. Her voice carried across the clearing like silk dragged over something sharp and jagged.
"Sis… that orange hair resembles him a lot."
A pause. A smile.
"I think they're connected."
The shorter one pale-green hair, unfocused eyes, Arela limp in her arms smiled back.
"Indeed."
A beat of silence.
"What a surprise."
The tall woman's orange gaze drifted lazily across the three of them before settling on Neo. Her smile widened not warmly, not cruelly, but with the detached amusement of someone watching insects struggle beneath a glass.
"Doesn't matter who we are."
She tilted her head slightly.
"And what we want…"
A soft laugh.
"It's enough for us to know. Not for you."
Neo's grip tightened on his axe. His knuckles went white.
"And why we killed him?"
She paused, as if savoring the question.
"Ah…"
Her lips curved upward.
"For fun, I guess?"
The black arrow was already in the air.
Icariel had drawn and released in a single motion smooth, silent, practiced a thousand times in the cold mornings before dawn. The arrow cut through the distance between them like a thought given form, aimed not at her chest, not at her throat, but at her eye.
The most vital point.
The one place even monsters couldn't protect.
For fun.
'She took his life... for fun?'
The rage had come boiling up from somewhere deep somewhere Icariel usually kept locked, buried beneath layers of logic and caution and the cold fear that governed every choice he made. But this was different. This wasn't about him. This wasn't about his life being threatened.
This was about someone treating life itself the most precious thing in existence, the only thing that mattered, the very thing Icariel had built his entire existence around preserving as if it were nothing.
A joke.
A moment's entertainment.
'What the fuck is that bitch talking about?'
He had controlled the rage. Channeled it. Used it the way the voice had taught him not to act, but to aim. And he had aimed flawlessly.
The arrow flew straight and true.
A millimeter from her eye then...shattered.
Not deflected. Not dodged. Not blocked.
Shattered.
The black wood splintered into dust. The steel tip crumbled. The fragments hung in the air for a fraction of a second a cloud of useless debris before falling to the snow like ash.
Not a scratch on her.
Not a wound.
Nothing.
The tall woman's eyes widened just slightly, just for a moment. Shock, perhaps. Or surprise that something so small had dared to reach for her.
Then her gaze shifted.
Past Neo.
Past Meron.
Past the trembling axe and the raised spear.
Directly onto him.
"What an impatient rat."
Her smile returned. Wider this time.
And a shiver crawled down Icariel's spine not the cold shiver of winter air, but something deeper. Something that whispered predator in a language older than words.
Meron moved.
Icariel saw it from the corner of his eye the trap setter's grip tightening, his arm drawing back, his spear leaving his hand in a powerful, perfect throw. The weapon spun through the air, aimed not at the tall woman but at the shorter one the pale-green hair, the unfocused eyes, the girl still held like a broken doll in her arms.
The throw was powerful.
Truly powerful.
Meron had spent twenty nine winters on this mountain. He had killed more animals than Icariel had eaten meals. His arm was iron. His aim was true.
The spear reached the short woman and shattered.
Same as the arrow. Same as if the air itself had turned to stone an inch from her skin.
Not broken.
Icariel's mind stumbled over the distinction.
Shattered.
Destroyed.
Like it never existed at all.
"Oh, for god's sake—"
His breath caught in his chest.
'What is happening? Voice tell me what to do.'
Silence.
The voice still did not respond.
Then Meron glanced at him. It was quick barely a flick of the eyes but Icariel saw it. A sharp glance. A commanding glance. The kind of look that didn't ask permission.
Run.
Notify the village.
Notify the chief.
The message was clear.
If they all stayed, they would all die. Icariel had the fastest legs. He had the most distance from the women. He was the smallest target, the hardest to track through the trees and the best at running away.
He was the only chance.
'They'll hold them down even if it's not possible even if it costs everything.'
Icariel turned.
He ran. Without a second thought. Without a regret. Without looking back.
The slope rose beneath him, steep and unforgiving, the snow dragging at his boots like hands reaching up from the ground. His lungs burned. His legs screamed. But he climbed.
Behind him distant at first, then closer he heard them.
Not footsteps.
Thunder.
He didn't need to glance back. He could feel them two presences, massive and hungry, closing the distance with a speed that should have been impossible for creatures their size. The snow didn't slow them. The terrain didn't challenge them.
They were faster than any bear he had ever seen.
Faster than any bear should be.
He took a sharp turn left, weaving between two ancient trunks, hoping the sudden change in direction would buy him a heartbeat maybe two.
The bears followed.
A family of wild pigs burst from the undergrowth ahead panic in their eyes, fleeing from something worse than any natural predator. They charged straight at the bears in blind terror.
The bears didn't slow.
Didn't swerve.
Didn't notice.
Massive paws came down like falling boulders. The wild pigs vanished beneath them not thrown, not bitten, but crushed. Their bodies became shapes in the snow, red and still, as the bears surged forward without breaking stride.
Icariel didn't watch.
He ran.
He reached the place he had been heading toward.
The branch.
The one he had crunched and broken earlier when they were running toward the scream, when he had been calculating escape routes even as his legs carried him toward danger. He had snapped it deliberately. Bent it just enough that the fracture was hidden beneath the surface.
A marker.
A warning.
A trap.
His legs pushed harder against the snow, forcing through the resistance, forcing his body to move faster than it wanted to. His breathing remained controlled barely despite the fire spreading through his chest.
His eyes locked forward.
The ground ahead looked no different from the ground behind. White. Smooth. Harmless.
But he knew better. He had prepared better. The bears were only a few meters behind him now.
Three steps.
Two.
One.
The first bear's claw reached for him a shadow falling across his back, cold and absolute.
Icariel twisted.
His body bent sideways sharp, desperate, wrong his hands finding the broken branch, his fingers gripping the splintered wood. He swung himself around it, using the momentum of his run to pivot, to rotate, to change direction completely.
A hundred and eighty degrees.
The kind of turn that killed momentum.
But not his life.
Behind him, the bears running side by side, massive and relentless could not stop.
They tried. Their claws dug into the snow, tearing furrows in the white, but the slope was against them. The speed was against them. The weight was against them.
And the snow beneath them simply...collapsed.
Not gradually.
Not with warning.
A deep, hollow crack split the air—sharp as bone breaking, loud as thunder in a clear sky. The surface gave way. The illusion of solid ground vanished beneath their massive weight, and both creatures dropped into the darkness below.
The sound that followed was not a roar.
It was something worse.
A distorted, crushing impact echoing from below followed by violent thrashing that shook the edges of the hole, sending loose snow cascading inward like white blood from an open wound.
Icariel didn't stop running. Not until he had put distance between himself and the collapse. Not until his lungs felt like they might tear open.
Then he turned.
Just once.
Just to confirm.
The hole was deep. Far deeper than any natural formation. Old. Deliberate in its shape, yet not carved by human hands. It was as if the ground itself had given way long ago, the mountain hollowed from within and forgotten, leaving behind only a swallowed darkness where earth had simply fallen into itself.
The bears thrashed at the bottom, their blurred forms clawing at the walls, desperate to climb out. Their growls echoed up through the frozen air—angry, confused, hungry.
But the walls were too steep.
The ice too smooth.
After a few seconds or maybe a minute, Icariel had stopped counting the thrashing slowed.
Then stopped.
Silence returned.
Broken only by the faint, wet sounds of movement far below.
Icariel's chest rose and fell.
Slowly.
Controlled.
He turned away. Not wanting to waste a single second.
His gaze flicked ahead—toward the village, toward the stone building with the black-maw flag, toward whatever chance of survival still remained.
Then his eyes dropped.
To the snow.
To the thing he hated.
White.
Empty.
"Tch."
A faint sound left him.
"I still hate you," he muttered.
Even as he said it, the truth was already there—settled, unavoidable.
He hated the snow. But he understood it.
Its greatest talent, after all, was concealment.
It hid what mattered. Covered danger. Made the safe look threatening and the threatening look harmless until the last possible moment. It lied constantly and without apology.
Which meant it was useful.
'No matter how much I hate it I can still use it.'
The pit had waited there for years beneath white silence, hidden perfectly until weight and speed turned concealment into a weapon. The snow had saved him because it lied better than the bears understood.
That was enough.
He would use anything.
Anything.
If it meant surviving. His bow hung against his back with the remaining arrows. He did not reach for it.
What would be the point? Not against those things. Not against women who stood untouched while steel and wood disintegrated before their skin. Even a hundred arrows would only give him a hundred confirmations of helplessness.
Nothing made sense.
Nothing obeyed the rules it should have obeyed.
So he ran toward the village.
Behind him, the forest grew quiet again.
And somewhere deeper among the trees beyond the blood, beyond Grin, beyond Meron and Neo and Ariela and the impossible women standing over all of it a woman with orange eyes was probably still smiling.