Gale shuddered on the cold ground. He was starving, in more ways than one, heavily injured from the monster who’d taken his hand, and weak. He wouldn’t make it like this. To make matters even worse, he had absolutely no survival skills. His bookish knowledge didn’t exactly translate to life in the middle of nowhere.

He was going to die here. He had accepted that, but it didn’t make it ache any less. He was going to die, alone, in the woods, far from anyone who cared.