Cassian didn’t like making mistakes. He preferred others doing so, far away from him.
But this? This was different. He had been careless, too slow, too sure of his own ability to survive. It had cost him. And now he was paying for it in the cold, biting silence of the mountain.
He turned and ran, though he wasn’t proud of it.
But pride didn’t matter if you were dead. And right now, survival was the only thing that mattered.
The snow blurred beneath his boots as he moved, his breath ragged and jagged in the frigid air, a stark contrast to the pounding of his heart.
He stumbled down the slope, half-blind in the dark, his right arm a searing, unholy weight against his body.
The burning pain was unbearable, but it was the deep, hollow ache beneath the burn that made him pause.
The creature’s claw had raked through more than just flesh. It had done something to him—something deep, something that felt wrong.
Behind him, he heard the creatures settle, a thick silence falling over the forest.
No pursuit, no snarling. Just… chewing. The sound was worse than any growl, any screech. Bones cracking, flesh being torn. Something was keeping them fed.
Something they’d found in the snow, a meal he didn’t want to see.
Cassian didn’t dare to look back. He knew what was happening back there, and he didn’t want to know any more.
The fog had thinned, but the silence had grown thicker, heavier.
No birds, no wind—nothing but the eerie silence that pressed in on him.
Even the crunch of his boots on snow seemed muffled, swallowed up by the thick atmosphere.
He collapsed near a frost-crusted boulder, falling to his knees and clutching his arm. His body was exhausted, but he couldn’t stop.
Not yet. Not until he had a plan, not until he had a safe place to rest.
He inspected the wound. It was deep—far deeper than he had expected. He could already feel the warmth of the blood as it soaked through his clothes, soaking the snow beneath him.
His right arm—the one he’d used to hold a sword, to defend himself, to fight—was no longer his. The numbness was spreading.
He tore off a piece of his coat and tied it around the wound, but the blood soaked through too quickly. It wasn’t enough. It was never enough.
The pain was sharp, relentless, but the worse part was that strange, creeping feeling.
Something was wrong, and it wasn’t just the wound. It was the arm itself. The feeling began at the cut, spreading beneath his skin like a slow, suffocating poison.
It felt alive, but not in the way flesh was alive. It was wrong—foreign. Like something else had taken root inside him.
Cassian’s breath hitched as he tried to flex his fingers, to make some kind of movement, but nothing happened.
His fingers were frozen, locked in place as if the cold had seeped into his very bones. He tugged at his arm, trying to move it, but it felt like it belonged to someone else.
His entire right side felt like it wasn’t his at all. It was a part of him, yes, but not truly a part of him.
“No…” he muttered under his breath, the word thick with disbelief. The numbness had spread to his shoulder now, and his stomach twisted with fear. He couldn’t move it.
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His sword arm was useless, and that left him vulnerable.
Helpless.
His mind raced as he stood there, frozen for a moment, unsure of what to do next.
Then, with no other option, he gave up. He didn’t like giving up—didn’t like it at all—but he had no choice.
The fog, the cold, the silence, the pain—they were all too much.
He had to survive, and that meant running. Running far, far away, and hoping that something would give him the strength to continue.
He staggered forward, his body sluggish, uncooperative, the weight of his useless arm dragging at his side.
Every step felt like it took more effort than the last, as if the world itself were pushing back against him, refusing to let him go.
The snow was endless, stretching out before him like an unforgiving sea, and every part of him screamed to stop, to rest, to give in.
But he couldn’t stop. Not yet.
The fog still clung to him, thick and stifling, like a living thing wrapped around his chest, choking him.
His breath came in ragged gasps, his vision blurred as the shock of his injury and the exhaustion began to catch up with him. But still, he moved forward, dragging his arm, dragging his body. He had to. He needed to survive.
He had to find shelter. He couldn’t let the creatures catch him. He couldn’t let the mountain take him, too.
The hunger for safety, for warmth, burned within him. It pushed him on, even though his body screamed for rest, for release from the pain and the cold.
He had no plan.
No direction.
He was just moving, stumbling blindly through the night, hoping that his legs would carry him far enough away from the horror behind him.
It didn’t matter that his arm was useless. It didn’t matter that his body was slowing down. He needed shelter, he needed to survive. He needed to make it through the night, through the endless, suffocating night.
And that need—that primal, burning need—pushed him forward, one step at a time, even as everything else around him seemed to be falling apart.
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