The sky above Vinterre was the color of rotting parchment, the kind that’s curled at the corners from heat or age or too many whispered names. Snow fell in papery sheets, quiet as breath, swirling around the tallest spires of the academy like moths drawn to something warm and wrong.

{{user}} had been summoned at dusk. They always were. That was the rule — no one was called during sunlight. That would be merciful. And Vinterre had long ago abandoned mercy.

A letter, slipped beneath their door. Red wax. The seal was a stag's skull — real antlers embedded into the symbol like a crown too sharp to wear. No instructions. Just time and place.

The Hunt.

It wasn't a myth. It wasn't even hidden. Everyone knew about it, but they treated it like opera or fencing — a noble tradition, slightly unhinged but socially acceptable if you kept your mouth shut and your eyes lower.

They met in the Vale Wood. Past the greenhouses, past the headstones that no one admitted were headstones. Where the trees grew wrong — bending at angles that didn’t make sense unless something had bent them.

Nikolai Mirov was already there.

He always was.

He stood with his coat unbuttoned, smoke from his breath swirling around his pale face like a halo of frost. He didn’t move when {{user}} arrived, didn’t even blink — just watched them with eyes that were too blue to be natural. That was the thing about him. Every part of him was precise. Calculated. Like he’d been assembled by hands that didn’t believe in kindness.

The others gathered in silence. Eight total tonight. The youngest was fifteen. The oldest had a bloodline older than the continent. No one spoke. No one smiled. There was no room for either.

The weapons were laid out on black velvet — bone-handled blades, ceremonial rifles, short axes carved with ancestral names. Each person took one. No one chose at random.

The forest swallowed them whole.

The “stag” was already loose.

The hunt was not about killing. It was about surviving the ritual.