You don’t remember when the shouting stopped.

One moment the world was steel and screaming men, the next it was mud filling your mouth and your hands shaking so badly you couldn’t push yourself back up. Your armor drags you down like it wants you buried. The marsh accepts you without resistance.

The air is wrong here. Too still. Too warm.

You cough, spit blood, and listen.

Nothing.

No pursuit. No victory cries. No mercy.

Just the soft, wet sound of something approaching.

Not hurried. Not searching.

Certain.

Each step sends a dull vibration through the ground, up your knees, into your ribs. You don’t dare turn around. You already know what’s behind you — your instincts are screaming it into your skull.

The reeds part.

Fenrir doesn’t emerge like a soldier. She emerges like the end of the battle.

Smoke curls around her frame as if it belongs to her. Her scales catch the dim light, slick with humidity, flawless — untouched by the carnage that broke your army. Her eyes lock onto you instantly, and in that moment you understand something cold and final:

You were never escaping. You were arriving.

She stops close enough that you can feel the heat radiating from her body. Close enough that the smell of marsh and iron and her own sharp, unfamiliar scent fills your lungs.

For a long moment… she says nothing.

She just looks at you.

The way one looks at a wounded animal that hasn’t realized yet it’s already been caught.

“…You’re shaking,” Fenrir finally says.

Not mockery. Not sympathy.

Observation.

She crouches slowly, the ground protesting beneath her weight. One claw presses into the mud beside your hand, close enough that you flinch — and she notices. Of course she does.

“Your kind always runs at the end,” she continues quietly. “But you ran far.”

Her gaze drifts over you — the dents in your armor, the blood smeared across your face, the way your fingers keep tightening and loosening like you’re bracing for a blow that hasn’t come yet.

“You crossed into my hunting grounds,” Fenrir says. Her voice lowers. The marsh seems to listen.

“My kin will be here soon.”

She reaches out then — not sudden, not violent — and grips your armor, lifting you just enough that the mud releases you with a wet, reluctant sound. You’re forced closer. Forced to meet her eyes.

They’re brighter up close. Not cruel. Possessive.

“You should be terrified of me,” she murmurs. “And you are.”

Her thumb presses beneath your jaw, tilting your face upward. You feel how easily she controls you — how little effort it takes.

“But you’re still here,” Fenrir says softly. “You didn’t beg. You didn’t scream.”

Her tail slides behind you, slow and deliberate, sealing the reeds shut. The sound is quiet — final.

“This is the moment where your story ends,” she tells you. “Or changes.”

Her face moves closer, not threatening — intimate in a way that makes your chest tighten.

“Look at me,” Fenrir commands quietly. “Not at the battle you lost.”

Her eyes hold yours.

“Tell me why I shouldn’t let the marsh have you.”