The forest was a blur.

  Branches clawed at Norn's face as he stumbled through the undergrowth. His chest burned. His legs were smoke. Somewhere behind him, the Reavers shouted, barking orders, steel clattering in pursuit.

  He didn't look back.

  He didn't need to.

  Their presence was like ash in his lungs.

  The forest floor betrayed him at every step—roots reaching up to snag his ankles, fallen branches cracking beneath his weight, announcing his position to the hunters. Each breath tore through his throat, ragged and painful. The blood on his hands had dried to a flaking crust, staining the pale skin beneath with memories he couldn't afford to dwell on now. Not when survival demanded every scrap of his attention.

  His boots tore through a mud-soaked slope, nearly taking him down. But he caught himself against a dead tree, breath ragged, fingers digging into rotting bark that crumbled beneath his desperate grip. The moon cast dappled shadows through the canopy, transforming the forest into a maze of silver and black. Disorienting. Dangerous.

  "Why did I think this was a good idea?" The thought flashed through his mind, bitter and sharp.

  "I shouldn't have escaped. No one escapes the Maw."

  "But if they catch me, I die anyway."

  He pressed a bloodied palm to the ground, pushed himself upright, and ran harder. His muscles screamed in protest, but fear was a more potent motivator than pain could ever be. He had seen what happened to runners—what was left of them when the Reavers finished their games.

  A shadow flickered between the trees.

  A Reaver.

  He was armored in worn blackened steel, marked with a cracked red spiral on his shoulder—the Black Sigil, smeared with someone else's blood. The metal plates caught moonlight as he moved, predatory and confident. This wasn't a chase to him—it was a hunt, methodical and inevitable.

  "Stop running, dog!" the man snarled, voice distorted behind his helmet's faceplate, the sound carrying through the still night air like a curse.

  Norn skidded to a halt on the gravel. Small stones scattered beneath his worn boots, the sound impossibly loud in the sudden stillness that fell between them.

  For a breath, everything stilled. The forest itself seemed to hold back its whispers, waiting.

  Then, with a sharp breath, Norn spun, grabbing a branch off the ground and flinging it like a spear. The Reaver instinctively jerked to the side, just as Norn rushed in, feet digging into the earth, kicking up debris in his wake. Every movement calculated despite the panic clawing at his chest.

  The Reaver loosed a bolt—twang. The sound cut through the night, deceptively delicate for something designed to end life.

  It missed by inches, close enough that Norn felt the disturbance in the air against his cheek. The bolt buried itself in a tree with a dull thunk, quivering in the bark like a living thing trying to escape.

  Norn crashed into him, driving the broken branch into his side, using momentum to shove the man off-balance. The Reaver dropped his crossbow and went for a sword, steel scraping against scabbard in a sound that had haunted Norn's nightmares for years.

  Too slow.

  Norn ducked the swing, kicked into the Reaver's knee, twisted his arm—and snapped it. The scream echoed through the forest, bouncing between trees, startling birds into flight. The sound would alert others. Time was running out.

  The dagger came next. A flash of steel. Stolen from the Reaver's waist, still warm from its owner's body heat.

  A quick slash across the throat, practiced and precise. The technique they had taught him in the Maw, now turned against them. Irony bitter as bile.

  The Reaver gurgled. Dropped. Didn't rise again. His blood looked black in the moonlight, spreading across fallen leaves in a widening pool.

  Norn wiped the blade clean on the Reaver's collar. His breathing was steady. Too steady. Unnaturally calm for someone who had just killed. But the Maw had trained that into him—the ability to kill without emotion, to remain clearheaded even as death bloomed beneath his hands.

  He knelt and looted the body—not for pride, not for cruelty. For survival. Each movement economical, practiced, the scavenging of a desperate man who knew time was his enemy.

  A dull dagger, already in his arms. A rusted belt coin. An old pendant of no worth—a twisted piece of metal that might once have held religious significance before the Reavers corrupted it with their touch.

  He kept the dagger and the pendant. Left the rest. The coin would only weigh him down, and he needed to travel light, to outrun both the hunters and the memories that pursued him with equal relentlessness.

  "I'm sorry," he murmured, the words falling like stones into still water, disturbing nothing.

  "But you would've killed me first."

  He closed the man's eyes and stood, the blood already drying on his fingers, flaking away like rust. An old habit—this small mercy of closing the eyes. Something his father had taught him while field-dressing game. The dead deserve dignity, his father had said. But Norn wasn't sure if that applied to men like the Reavers. Men who had carved suffering into art. Men who had built the Maw.

  The night deepened around him as he continued his flight, more careful now. The forest thinned, giving way to rolling hills dotted with the skeletal remains of burned-out farmsteads. The destruction was old—not from recent raids, but from the systematic purges of years past. When the Reavers had first swept through these lands, leaving nothing but ash and bone in their wake.

  Dusk bled into night as Norn limped into a ruined village. Rotting fences and collapsed roofs greeted him, silent sentinels marking where life had once flourished. Wind whispered between broken shutters, carrying ghost-voices that existed only in his imagination. The sound of phantom children playing. The echo of conversations cut short by flame and blade.

  It had been weeks—maybe months—since anyone lived here. Nature had already begun reclaiming what man had abandoned, weeds pushing through cracked foundations, vines crawling across fallen beams like hungry fingers.

  He moved carefully, checking each doorway, blade in hand. Eyes scanning for movement, ears straining for any sound that didn't belong to the night. The Reavers were clever—sometimes they left men behind in ruins like these, waiting for desperate fugitives seeking shelter.

  This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

  He found a small house still standing and pushed inside. One wall was collapsed, offering a clear escape route if needed. The hearth was cold, ashes long since scattered by wind and time. Rats had made a nest in a broken chair, tiny eyes gleaming like malevolent stars in the darkness. They scattered at his approach, disappearing into cracks with indignant squeaks.

  Norn sat in the corner, back to the wall, positioned where he could see both the doorway and the gap in the collapsed wall. The dagger lay across his knees, blade catching what little moonlight filtered through the ruined ceiling.

  "Sleep is a luxury I can't afford." The thought was bitter, edged with exhaustion that went bone-deep.

  But he closed his eyes anyway.

  Just for a moment.

  The weight of days without rest dragged at him, pulling him under despite his training, despite his fear. His head drooped forward, chin touching chest, fingers still curled around the dagger's hilt. Even in sleep, he remained vigilant, body tense and ready to spring into action at the slightest disturbance.

  Pale light filtered through holes in the roof, painting stripes across Norn's face. His eyes snapped open, instantly alert, cursing himself for the weakness of succumbing to exhaustion. He hadn't meant to sleep—had only intended to rest his eyes for a few heartbeats. Now the sun was rising, casting long shadows across the ruined village.

  Norn stirred with a grunt and sat up, joints stiff, muscles screaming in protest after hours in the same defensive position. Every movement sent needles of pain through his overtaxed body, reminders of the flight, the fight, the desperate scramble for survival.

  He stretched, checked his weapons, and stepped outside. Caution guided every movement, eyes sweeping the perimeter for signs of pursuit. For tracks in the dirt, for broken branches, for anything that might suggest the Reavers had found his trail during the night.

  The village was silent.

  Until something shifted at the edge of his vision.

  Movement—by an old cart. Subtle but unmistakable, a disruption in the stillness that set every one of Norn's senses on high alert.

  He turned, eyes narrowing, hand automatically finding the dagger at his waist. Ready to strike, to defend, to kill if necessary.

  A figure crouched beside a corpse, covered in a loose, oversized tunic. Thin limbs. Mud-caked hair.

  A girl, no older than sixteen or seventeen.

  She was clutching a roll of bandages, tugging it from the dead man's satchel like it was treasure. Her fingers worked with desperate urgency, trembling slightly as she pulled the frayed cloth free from the decaying bag.

  Norn froze. She didn't notice him yet, too absorbed in her scavenging. Her back to him, vulnerable and unaware of the danger that could have been approaching.

  She wasn't from here—too clean, too quiet. Another scavenger, probably. Someone else trying to survive in a world that had become increasingly hostile to those without protection, without allegiance to one of the powerful factions that now carved up what remained of civilization.

  "Another survivor." The realization struck him with unexpected force, a reminder that he wasn't the only one fighting to exist in this broken world.

  Thunk.

  A sudden arrow slammed into the wall beside his head, nearly grazing his ear, sending splinters of rotted wood flying. The sound shattered the morning stillness, startling birds into flight from a nearby rooftop.

  He dropped low by reflex, scanning fast, cursing himself for becoming distracted by the girl. For forgetting, even for a moment, that danger was constant in this new reality.

  A Reaver emerged from behind the broken stalls—leather armor, twisted smile, short bow still aimed. Not the same one from the forest—a different hunter, but with the same predatory confidence, the same cruel anticipation in his eyes.

  "I missed..? Goddamn it." The man spat, already nocking another arrow, movements practiced and fluid.

  The girl froze. Eyes wide. She didn't even scream. Just became utterly still, like prey hoping to avoid a predator's notice through sheer immobility.

  "I thought I erased my traces…"

  "Shit. They tracked me here."

  Norn grabbed a fistful of sand and ash from the ground, the gritty mixture harsh against his palm.

  The Reaver advanced, cocky, bowstring pulling back. His lips curved into a smile that held no warmth, only the satisfaction of a hunter cornering his quarry.

  "Bang." He whispered it like a lover's promise, a private joke between him and death.

  Norn flung the dirt into the air—a sudden cloud—then bolted. The grit caught morning sunlight, momentarily blinding, creating just enough confusion for him to move.

  He grabbed the girl without a word and dragged her into a half-burned house just before another arrow hissed past them, embedding itself in a support beam with a solid thwack. The girl stumbled, a small sound escaping her—not quite a whimper, not quite a gasp—as Norn pulled her roughly behind a crumbling wall.

  Inside, the girl trembled, clutching the bandage roll like it could shield her from arrows, from Reavers, from the brutality of the world itself. Her eyes were wide, pupils dilated with fear, breath coming in short, shallow gasps.

  Norn crouched beside her, pressing a finger to her lips. The gesture firm but not cruel.

  "Stay quiet," he whispered. "If you want to live, stay quiet."

  She didn't nod.

  She didn't speak.

  But she listened. Her breathing slowed, becoming deliberate, controlled. Survival instinct overriding panic.

  Norn listened too—footsteps approaching, slow and cautious. The crunch of boots on debris. The soft creak of leather armor. The barely audible whisper of an arrow being drawn from a quiver.

  He moved like liquid shadow, silent and precise, reaching for the dagger at his waist. Each motion calculated, economical. No wasted energy. No telegraphing of intent.

  The Reaver's shadow passed the wall.

  Then his foot.

  That was enough.

  Norn lunged, driving the dagger into the soft point between the Reaver's collar and neck. Right where the armor ended and vulnerability began—a gap he'd been taught to exploit during his years in the Maw. Years spent learning how to kill efficiently, how to turn human knowledge of the body's weaknesses into lethal precision.

  Blood fountained. The man gagged and dropped. The sound of his collapse seemed impossibly loud in the morning stillness, a dull thud that might as well have been a war drum for all the danger it represented.

  Norn lowered him gently, the girl watching with wide eyes. He eased the body to the ground not out of respect, but to minimize noise. To avoid attracting any other Reavers who might be nearby, waiting, listening.

  She didn't scream.

  She didn't run.

  But now she was watching him with a different kind of fear. Not fear of the Reaver—fear of Norn himself. Of the casual efficiency with which he had taken a life. Of how little it seemed to affect him.

  The sun had fully risen. Smoke curled in the distance, marking another village, another encampment, another pocket of humanity trying to survive in a world gone mad.

  Norn stared down at the body. Then turned to the girl.

  She still clutched the bandage.

  Still shook.

  Still didn't speak.

  "It's over," he said quietly.

  But he didn't believe it. Nothing was ever over. One Reaver dead meant others would come looking. The hunt never truly ended—it just paused, regrouped, resumed with renewed purpose.

  She looked at him.

  Terrified.

  And yet—

  The girl didn't run.

  But she didn't move either.

  She sat on her knees, still gripping the roll of bandages, her breath shallow and uneven. Her eyes never left him, watching every movement with the wariness of someone who had learned the hard way not to trust appearances, not to believe in safety.

  Norn watched her, saying nothing. His own breathing even, controlled. Face a mask that revealed nothing of the calculations running behind his eyes. Weighing options. Assessing risks. Determining whether leaving her behind would improve his chances of survival.

  A breeze picked up, lifting dust through the broken rafters of the chapel. Somewhere in the distance, a crow cried—a harsh sound that cut through the morning stillness like a blade.

  He didn't know why he hadn't left her.

  But he didn't.

  Maybe it was because she reminded him of someone—of himself, years ago, before the Maw had hollowed him out and filled the space with death and ash. Before he'd become as much a weapon as the dagger in his hand. Or maybe it was simpler than that. Maybe, after years of destruction, some small, uncorrupted part of him recognized the opportunity to save rather than destroy.

  Whatever the reason, he remained. Waiting. For what, he wasn't entirely sure.

  But as the sun climbed higher in the sky, casting shorter shadows across the ruined village, one thing became clear: they couldn't stay here. Others would come looking. The hunt would continue.

  And for reasons he couldn't articulate even to himself, Norn knew the girl would be coming with him when they left.