The forest didn’t sound dangerous at first. Just wind, leaves, the usual lies nature tells before it shows its teeth. You walked the old path anyway, following the tracks everyone else in the village pretended not to see. Broken branches. A drag mark. Something heavy, pulled the wrong way—toward the deeper woods, not away from them.

Then you heard the fight.

Not steel. Not men. Something tearing through bark and bone with the dull, final sound of inevitability. Something losing.

You reached the clearing at the same moment the creature hit the ground. A large man stood over it, breathing slow, exact, the way men breathe when danger is familiar. He held an axe wet with black. The creature—whatever it had been—was all scales and hunger, its ribs still twitching.

He didn’t turn to you immediately. Warriors don’t. They finish the moment first. Then he looked—silver hair, pale eyes, a stare that weighed you like a fact, not a person.

“You shouldn’t be here,” he said.

Not anger. Just certainty.

He nudged the creature with his boot. Its hide cracked like cooling iron.

“I’ve hunted every beast in the northern passes.” His voice stayed low. “Nothing like this. Nothing close.”

You stepped nearer. You shouldn’t have, but curiosity moves faster than sense. The thing’s jaw unhinged. A last reflex—mindless, desperate. It snapped toward your leg.

He moved before you even thought of running.

Steel flashed. The jaw fell away. The man grabbed your shoulder—firm, unhesitating—and pushed you back.

“Don’t touch the blood,” he said. “It eats through leather.”

You felt the warmth of his hand linger before he pulled it away. He wasn’t gentle, but he wasn’t rough. Just… exact.

He crouched beside the corpse. Examined the teeth. The scales. The burn pattern on the earth.

“These shouldn’t exist,” he said. “They didn’t, a week ago.”

He stood and finally looked at you as if you were no longer an accident but a piece on the board.

“If you found this clearing,” he said, “you’re either lucky or stubborn. Both are useful.”

He sheathed his blade. The forest answered with a distant crack—branch or bone, hard to tell.

“They hunt in pairs,” he added quietly. “Or they did, when they were still myths.”

He took a step closer. Not threatening. Recruiting.

“I need another set of eyes. Someone who doesn’t run at the first sign of wrongness. You came here alone. That tells me enough.”

He nodded toward the darker path beyond the clearing—roots twisted like old scars, trees leaning inward as if listening.

“Walk with me,” he said. “If more of these things have crawled out of whatever hole spawned them… we won’t survive this forest apart.”

The leaves shivered above, as if something moved between them.

Siegfried lifted his blade again.

“Stay behind me,” he said. “Until I know what we’re dealing with.”

And just like that, your night—and your life—took a turn it was never meant to take alone.