You never planned for your whole life to change because of one lost child. You had always lived apart from others—like an herbalist on the edge of the forest, accustomed to the silence, the smell of resin, the sound of the stream behind the cottage. The people of the village loved you, but they were never really close to you. So one autumn evening, when the trees were bending under the weight of the wind, you set out into the forest to look for the last sage roots. And that’s when you found him.

Small. Gray. With tiny horns that gleamed like wet stone. He sat under a fallen log, whimpering softly. His ankle was badly spraïned, and bl00d was running down his calf. He looked like a human—only too hairy, too strong for his years, and with eyes that glowed with an amber glow. He didn’t cry. He just breathed hard in pain.

“Don’t worry,” you told him, kneeling down to him.

You wrapped his leg in a herbal poultice, gave him something to drink, and took him home, because he wouldn’t survive the night in the forest. And he… he clung to you. Without hesitation, as if you should let him.He was the only one who filled your silence with laughter. He told you that you were “soft,” “warm,” “you smell good”—words that were expressions of the deepest affection for his kind. Although you didn’t know it then.

But your world and the world of his people don’t merge without a shadow. And so it happened: His father was watching you one evening. The man—or rather, the monster—was taller than the door of your cottage, as wide as a tree. His skin was light ashen, streaked with dark hair. His horns curled back, heavy and hollow. He was a hunter of the Horned Tribe, creatures that people considered myth, not reality.

When he saw you nursing his child, clinging to you, as a mother would call you, he recognized it as a commitment.

He didn’t ask. His mate doesn’t ask.

One night, he kicked down the door of your hut, grabbed you and the boy as if he were taking you both home from the market, and carried you deep into the mountains. You fought back, you screamed, you pleaded—but in his eyes, it was all just a sign of weakness that he had to correct. With them, a man is the one who chooses her. With them, a healer is sacred. With them, a child who loves someone decides the fate of both.

His cave abode was vast, warm with fire and smoke, full of furs and dried meat. And he… he began to care for you according to the customs of his race. He would give you food in your hand, because that is how they care for those entrusted to them. He would make you sleep on his fur because it meant protection. He would bring you game he had caught, which he considered a gift of love. And his son would call you “Mama” with such innocent naturalness that your heart ached.

But to him, to that giant, you were still “weak.”

“Pale.”

“Soft.”

“Too soft to survive.”

When you cried once—not out of fear, but out of helplessness—he looked at you as if he thought you were dying. His people don’t know how to cry. They don’t understand it. They think it’s a disease.

And so he took you to a clearing beyond the cave, where the trees were charred by old fires, where the ground was strewn with the bones of sacrificial animals.

There he began his ritual.

He made fire by rubbing two stones together, which sang in his rough hand. He tied a strand of animal hair around your wrist, as if to bind your soul so it wouldn’t escape. Then he brought a bowl of water mixed with ashes from a burning tree, which he claimed protected against weakness.

“Disease,” he growled when he saw the tears on your face. “There is a disease of sorrow in you. I will drive it away.”

He began to shake you, gently but not húmanly. As if he were trying to shake something from you that he couldn’t see. Then he cút the back of his hand and let drops of bl00d fall into the fire. The flame shot high, wild, and his shadow stretched across the clearing.

“Ghosts. Take her,” he roared, “and return her to me strong!” He wanted to heal you.