Cassian’s breath caught in his throat as he scanned the shifting fog. The snowstorm raged around him, the world reduced to a blur of white and gray. But in the midst of it, through the swirling fog, something caught his eye.

  A pair of eyes.

  Not human. Too bright. Too alive.

  They glowed faintly, like twin lanterns in the darkness. For a moment, Cassian couldn’t move. He simply stared at them, fixated, as they blinked slowly—like they were taking their time, observing him just as much as he was observing them.

  The eyes didn’t shift. They didn’t flinch. They just watched.

  His hand tightened around the hilt of his sword, but his feet remained frozen in place. His mind raced, trying to make sense of it. He couldn’t even tell where they were coming from. The fog made everything around him indistinct, shifting, the snow swallowing up all traces of the ground beneath him.

  But the eyes remained, burning through the white chaos like they were anchored to something real.

  Cassian took a tentative step forward, the snow crunching beneath his boots. As soon as his movement broke the stillness, the eyes blinked again. Then they began to retreat, slowly, just enough to stay out of reach but always visible.

  The hair on the back of his neck stood on end.

  Don’t follow them, his mind whispered. But it was too late. His legs were already moving, drawn to those eyes like a moth to a flame. The need to understand—to know what they were—pushed him forward, each step more deliberate than the last.

  He barely noticed when the air grew colder, when the wind began to howl louder. The fog pressed in closer, thick and heavy, until the eyes were the only thing he could see, the only thing that mattered.

  They stopped. For a brief moment, the eyes flickered and vanished—disappearing behind a veil of white.

  Cassian’s pulse quickened. His breath came faster, colder, as he stopped in his tracks. He could still feel the weight of their gaze on him, could still hear the beat of his own heart echoing in the silence.

  The fog was still. The air was thick, oppressive. And then, just as he thought they had disappeared, the eyes reappeared—closer now.

  They were much, much closer.

  And this time, they weren’t alone.

  Cassian’s mind raced, trying to figure out what they were. He vaguely remembered stories—whispers of creatures that lived in the mist, things that prowled the wilds of the mountains. But those were just stories, weren’t they? Just old tales meant to scare soldiers, to keep them cautious. Yet the feeling creeping down his spine told him those stories were not as far from truth as he’d liked to believe.

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  The eyes were larger now, no longer just a pair. There were others, scattered in the fog like stars in the night sky, glowing softly, hauntingly. But what terrified him wasn’t the eyes themselves, but the way they moved.

  They were following him.

  Cassian’s heart hammered in his chest. He glanced around, but the snowstorm had thickened, closing in on him like an invisible hand, erasing the path behind him. The mountains felt alive now, pressing in from all sides, the fog too thick to see through. The air was suffocating, and his breath clouded in the cold, but it wasn’t the chill that made him sweat. It was the feeling of being hunted.

  He shifted his weight, instinctively drawing the sword tighter in his grip. He couldn’t shake the thought that, whatever was out there, it wasn’t just watching. It was waiting.

  Cassian took another step, slowly, cautiously. His boots sunk deeper into the snow, the crunch of each step deafening in the oppressive silence. His ears were straining for any sound—anything that would break the suffocating quiet of the mountain—but the only noise came from his own movements, amplified in the stillness.

  Then, he heard it.

  A soft rustle, like fabric brushing against snow. Too soft to be a person. Too deliberate to be the wind. He stopped immediately, holding his breath. The eyes were gone. The fog had swallowed them up again, but the sensation remained—the prickling awareness that something was right behind him.

  He spun around, sword at the ready, but the sight that met him was almost worse than what he expected. The eyes weren’t there. Nothing was.

  Nothing at all.

  His heartbeat thudded painfully in his chest as he looked around, trying to pierce through the shifting fog. He took a step back, his instincts screaming at him to leave, to run, but something held him in place.

  It’s too quiet.

  His fingers tightened around the hilt of his sword, knuckles white. He fought to steady his breathing, his mind reeling, trying to make sense of the situation. The eyes had been real. He wasn’t imagining them. But they weren’t here now.

  And that terrified him more than anything.

  The air was unnaturally still, as if whatever was behind the mist had stopped moving. Cassian’s heart hammered in his chest. He could feel something’s presence. That primal sense, that warning deep in his bones, told him it wasn’t just the fog playing tricks on him.

  Then, another shift. A low, guttural sound rippled through the mist, a low vibration that made the air feel heavier. Cassian’s breath caught in his throat.

  And there they were.

  Out of the fog emerged a massive shape, coalescing slowly at first, like a shadow slowly taking form. He blinked, but it didn’t go away. The thing’s eyes—no, eyes—glowed an eerie yellow, like twin embers smoldering in the darkness, each one large enough to fill his vision.

  The creature stepped forward, massive claws dragging through the snow, its body built like a serpent crossed with a mountain—scaled, muscular, and covered in thick, leathery hide. Its mouth gaped open, revealing rows of jagged, gleaming teeth that could rip through bone with ease. The air around it seemed to shimmer with unnatural heat, even in the frigid mountain cold.

  Cassian’s sword felt light in his grip. He wasn’t sure if it was fear or just disbelief. This thing—this beast—was unlike anything he had ever encountered. It didn’t belong here.

  He forced himself to take a step back, the crunch of his boots in the snow loud in the otherwise oppressive silence. His instincts screamed at him to run, to flee, but his feet refused to move.