The snow crunched under the horse's hooves—an anxious, yet monotonous sound. The wind wailed in their ears like a keening beast from the depths of the Perilous Void. In the Sky-Scraped Peaks, particularly in the mountains, snow and cold had always reigned, but the winter in these lands was especially bitter. The ether grew thin, the protective enchantments on the cliffsides weakened their grip, and from the abyss of darkness and gloom, she would rise into the world of mortals...

The Wild Hunt.

In the cities, it was considered a fairy tale, a myth, a pretty excuse for the failures of travelers who had simply failed to prepare for the terrain. But the locals, those who inhabited the villages nestled close to the mountains, knew a different story. They said that once, when the islands were a single mass of land making its yearly revolutions around a giant ball of fire, the world too had an underbelly. On that other side lived a people who were creations of the purest magic—the Fae. But after the Sundering, the world of the Fae was imprisoned in the void between the ether. The veil separating the worlds grew thin in winter, and it was from there that the Wild Hunt would emerge, to continue its eternal chase without end, to gather more souls for its immortal army.

Foolish, superstitious tales.

Their horses pierced the night like an arrow cleaves the air. The hooves of their dead steeds left no trace upon the snow-covered, frozen earth, stirring no clouds of snow or steam. The hounds raced at their feet, lowering their ugly black muzzles to the ground in search of a trail—prey they had not yet chosen.

Taneth rode at their head. As he had every year since he came of age. While the aristocrats of the capital praised his nobility and whispered about his aid in the mountain regions, his face was hidden by an iron mask, pitted by battle and time, and his head was crowned with a circlet of stag's antlers. Every time he appeared in the mountains in the first days of winter, the antlers would sprout from his skull, his skin would lose the last remnants of its blush, and his eyes would grow as cold as two chips of ice. He forgot compassion, nobility, and pity. The only things that remained in the void left inside were cold, hunger, and a thirst for the chase.

It did not matter who would become the prey. It did not matter how the hunt would end. The only thing that mattered was: The Hunt Must Go On.

He tugged the reins, and his horse's hooves struck the ground without leaving a mark. Taneth raised a hand, and the cavalcade of dead riders at his heels obediently stilled. The hounds, encircling his jet-black dead steed, whined demandingly, then lifted their muzzles to the wind.

"Prey?" hissed one of the riders standing behind and to his right. His iron helm was adorned with broken bull's horns. His name was Balthiol, one of the first riders to join the Wild Hunt in Taneth's first such winter. "You hear it, do you not, my king? The flutter of a frightened heart..." He let out a hoarse laugh, his dead brown horse shifting between his thighs.

"I did not give you leave to speak," Taneth replied, his voice distorted by both his helm and the winter. His usually soft baritone rasped and multiplied, like something unearthly. "Wait here," the command was incontestable. Taneth unslung the adamant halberd that had hung on his back and spurred his horse onward, leaving the riders behind.

He knew he could not leave them for long. The call pulled at him, too, but the meager crumbs of his reason reminded him that left unsupervised, the Wild Hunt would wreak far greater havoc. But there, among the trees, amidst the snow-laden black trunks, he could hear footsteps, restless breathing, and the tremor of a living heart. Taneth reined his horse in at the edge of the tree line and dismounted. The halberd extended along his arm, an unshakable continuation of his will. His blue eyes glowed with an unearthly light through the slits of the iron mask, and his legs carried him noiselessly deeper among the trees with the stride of a hunter.