The Beastmaster

Since the night in the snow, something in Ren had shifted.

It was not enough anymore to simply live in the village and pretend nothing lurked beyond the tree line. Every path through the forest seemed to hold shadows now, and he walked among them.

He cleared out a bandit camp by wearing the shape of a bear, charging through the firelight in a storm of claws and roars. He turned their courage to ash, crushed bodies beneath his weight, and when the survivors tried to regroup, he slid into their minds one by one and made them see enemies in their friends. By dawn, none of them were left.

Other times, he wore the skin of a wolf, leading his pack in silence until they fell together on the last of the bandits, teeth tearing through flesh and bone.

Sometimes he changed his face to that of an ordinary traveler and walked into the camps of adventuring parties with false smiles. Some were harmless. Others were thieves in disguise, their blades intended for his village. Those parties never made it back to the road.

By day, he was still the same boy. Ren worked beside his father in the fields, spoke quietly with his mother, and laughed with Annalise at the well as though there were no blood on his hands.

But the forest whispered of something worse than bandits.

Rumors began to spread. Villages miles away had fallen silent. Entire hunting patrols had gone into the wild and never returned. Those who did were mauled beyond recognition, their wounds nothing like those left by wolves or bears.

Ren went hunting for the truth in spirit form.

The wind carried him over snow and ice until he found it: a clearing littered with torn tents and shattered weapons.

At its center knelt a man. Or what had once been a man.

The Beastmaster’s skin hung loose over his frame, a patchwork of scars and strange markings. His eyes glowed faintly in the gloom. Around him, wolves crouched over corpses, their muzzles dripping with gore. A bear tore strips of muscle from a man’s thigh. Ravens hopped from ribcage to ribcage, pulling at soft organs with wet sounds.

The Beastmaster ate among them as if part of the pack. He ripped the arm from a fallen adventurer and bit through it with a crunch, hot blood steaming in the cold air. The stench was overwhelming, thick with iron and rot. When he laughed, it was through teeth slick with human flesh, his voice carrying an inhuman rasp.

Ren felt bile rise in his throat, but he did not move.

Then the Beastmaster’s head lifted. His gaze turned directly to where Ren’s spirit watched. A slow smile split his face.

I see you.

The voice was not in Ren’s ears, but inside his skull. The trees seemed to shudder.

Ren fled. He raced over branches and shadows, forcing himself back into his body before the Beastmaster could follow him through the veil. But the image of that clearing stayed in his mind like a stain he could not wash away.

Three days later, the beasts came.

It began with the sound of the alarm bell. Ren was already moving before his parents had reached the door. Through the darkness, shapes moved between the houses. Wild dogs with glassy, unnatural eyes. A wild boar crashing through a fence. Birds swooping low, pecking at faces and eyes.

Ren’s spirit leapt from his body, slipping into the mind of a wild dog mid-stride. He turned it sharply away from a group of children, leading it straight into a wall. He abandoned it before the skull struck stone, flowing into the body of a raven and diving at a bear’s eyes until the beast stumbled back toward the forest.

The air was thick with shouts and screams. Steel clanged against teeth and claw. Farmers fought beside hunters in the narrow lanes between houses. Annalise’s father stood in the road with a spear, stabbing again and again into the side of a maddened boar until it collapsed in the snow.

Ren darted from beast to beast, scattering the attack, making the predators turn on each other when they could.

By dawn, the snow was trampled and red, the air heavy with smoke from burned carcasses. The village still stood, but several homes were wrecked. Blood marked more than one doorway.

It was a victory, but only barely.

Ren knew the truth even as the others celebrated surviving the night.

This was not the end. The Beastmaster would not stop.

The next time they met, it would be face to face.