The Beast Revealed

Rain drummed faintly above the mossy rock, pattering through gaps in the overhang and spattering Karo’s neck. He woke fitful, flame-coaxed warmth ebbing to cool stone. Gurr’s deep breathing—a blunt rhythm—was oddly comforting, while Mira curled silent under her battered pelt, one hand closed firm around the pouch of gathered roots and bone charms.

Before the dawn was full, Karo sat up. His heart ached with the weight of the unknown. In the faintest blue light, Mira opened her eyes and nodded. With the ritual of travelers, she dipped her fingers in a puddle, drawing the protection spiral upon their foreheads. Gurr grumbled awake, stretching his broad shoulders until his joints crackled.

“We move now?” he asked, voice husky. “Or wait for sun?”

Karo touched the haft of his spear. “We follow the marks before rain wipes them away.”

They left behind the cold cinders of their hidden fire, every twitch of green or shadow sending shivers through their grown-tough bones. Past the ferns and brambles, the air changed—thin, acrid, edged with a metallic scent. Birds remained ghosts, unheard and unseen.

Soon, the terrain grew wrong. Char and soot tattooed the bark of trees. The roots curled inward as if shrinking from touch. Beneath a twisted birch, Mira touched a blackened patch. “Not light-fire,” she whispered. “It eats deeper. Not from storm.”

Gurr’s nostrils flared. “Smells like teeth and burning.”

They pressed on, senses hunting for danger or sign. Every few paces, Karo found new marks—imprints huge as Mira’s head, pressed deep and short-toed, with hard grooves where something massive had dragged claws. A freshness to the prints made Karo’s skin prickle.

The tree line broke suddenly into a wide, raw clearing—a scar of blackened earth, ringed by trees whose bleached limbs groped skyward, bark flaking in curls. Heat still lingered, lifting from stones split and melted into strange shapes. All about, remnants of death littered the bare soil: bones, cracked and stripped; skulls split like river pebbles. Feathers and fur lay in ashen clusters, untouched by scavengers. The stench was thick, heavy—a reek of scorched flesh, unclean and hungry.

Gurr muttered a broken chant. Fear slid oily up Karo’s spine.

“See—there—” Mira pointed with trembling hand. Across the clearing, a wide gouge trailed into the earth. Prints fresh, soil steamed faintly in their wake. Between charred log and stone, a heap of bones rose—a twisted altar of what had come before them.

Sudden movement. Gurr was pacing the outskirts, peering beneath a blackened log. Karo hissed warning, “Stay close!” but Gurr’s curiosity tugged him out of formation, eyes wide as he followed something—perhaps movement or a glint of bone—deeper between the trunks.

Mira clutched Karo’s arm, pulse racing. Wind shifted; the clearing crackled as if catching breath. A croak sounded from overhead: a murder of crows, startled into flight by sound or scent. Karo squinted against smoke-tainted light. “Gurr!” he called.

A low, booming snap rent the hush. Gurr’s shout echoed sharp through the trees. Karo charged—Mira darted behind, herbs clutched hard—tripping over debris toward the noise.

Gurr lay sprawled amidst a ring of saplings, one foot entwined in a looped vine. Another tug—the vine ripped taut, nearly flipping him. With a grunt he slashed at it, freeing himself as a crude pit yawned just beside. Spears—sharpened sticks, charred by heat—lined its base. Breathless, Gurr struggled up, wild-eyed. “Trap,” he spat. “Set for beast. Or us.”

Karo helped pull him free, heart hammering. “Who did this? Not the Crooked folk—too big. Too fresh.”

Mira, scanning the ground, shook her head. “See how the earth is melted, spears burned at tips? Fire—used to harden, maybe by what we follow. Or someone else hunting it. But the tracks—these are new, not man’s doing.”

Gurr leaned on Karo, favoring his ankle. “Something too big. Something taught by fire.”

They cast their eyes around the clearing. Every sign pointed to a presence beyond mere animal. Marks on tree trunks where bark had fused and glassy runnels scored the surface. Stones burst open, insides vitrified. The print of a huge paw—five digits, thumb-like, pressing deep. In one, a clinging wad of black resin, still hot.

Mira’s hands trembled as she picked through the boneheap. She found a skull—fox, jawbone charred, teeth shining white and undamaged. “Kills clean, burns after? Or burns as it takes?”

Karo crouched, feeling at the print’s edges. “This is not prey. This is power.”

He looked to where the gouge in the earth ran, leading into denser brush. Despite the temptation to flee, Karo’s will tightened. If this fire beast was what starved their home, they had to find it. Understand it. Or the Dawn Tribe would vanish, scattered by hunger and terror.

Mira peeled away from the gloom, stooping to the edge of the clearing. There, strangling a stump, bloomed lush green stems—herbs rare and pungent, their leaves like curled claws, striped with reddish sap. Mira’s face sharpened in recognition. “Ancestor’s cure,” she whispered. “Old stories say—keeps evil at bay, heals the burn.” She gathered fistfuls, hands steady now with ritual.

Gurr snarled, “If spirits walk, let them fear us too.” He spat, rubbing dirt onto his chest, an old shield against witchery.

Karo looked up, mind thundering. “We go deeper. Find where it sleeps. If it uses fire, we must see how.”

The three approached the far trail, bracing for whatever met them. Sun angled low, red through the smog of the burning. Everything hummed, heavy with threat, with awe. As they advanced, Karo’s heart lit with the cold spark of revelation: power hungering for power, and humanity on the edge of its oldest fear.

They slipped into the brush, wary but resolute—following the spoor of singed earth and mystery. Behind them, the beast’s clearing smoldered, a place between death and creation. The world ahead was shadow and rumor. But now they moved as one, each carried by the other’s hope and terror. And before them, the unknown waited, bright-edged with ash and fire.