Aiyana Redfeather's Arc

Chapter 1 of 6

Aiyana Redfeather crouched behind a fallen slab of stone and stared at the cavern his people once called home. Beasts had driven his tribe out three seasons ago. Now his family slept in a cramped chamber cut into a cliff, hungry and cold. He meant to take the cavern back. But he had never seen the beasts up close. He could not fight what he did not understand. A hand gripped his shoulder. Kaya Stoneheart dropped beside him without a sound. She had tracked game since she was a child, and no one in the tribe moved quieter. She scowled at him. "You came alone," she whispered. "You want to die alone too?" "I have to see them," Aiyana said. "We attack blind, we lose everyone." Kaya studied his face. Then she nodded once and pointed at a ledge above the cavern mouth. "Higher. Downwind. If we live, you owe me." They climbed. The stone was slick. Aiyana pressed flat against the ledge and looked down at the dark cavern entrance. For a long time nothing moved. Then the wall itself seemed to shift. A beast peeled away from the rock. Its scales carried the exact colors of the stone behind it. Aiyana had walked past that spot a hundred times as a boy and never guessed a killer could stand there unseen. The creature towered on thick hind legs. Its jaws opened wide enough to swallow a man whole. Kaya's breath caught. She grabbed a pebble and rolled it in her fingers, thinking. "That is why the scouts vanished," she breathed. "They never saw it. It was already there." The beast lifted its head. It sniffed the air. Aiyana went cold. The wind had turned. The creature swung toward their ledge and roared. Aiyana yanked Kaya backward as jaws snapped where her head had been. They slid down the far slope, feet skidding on loose rock. The beast crashed after them, faster than anything so large should move. "The gap!" Kaya shouted. She pointed at a crack in the cliff, too narrow for the beast. They dove through it. The creature slammed the stone above them and screamed. Its claws raked the opening, but its shoulders would not fit. They ran until the roars faded. In a hollow far downstream, Aiyana finally stopped and dropped to his knees, chest heaving. "I saw it," he said. "I know what took our home now." Kaya spat blood from a split lip. "You know one thing. It hides in plain sight. So no wall, no shadow, no bush is safe." Aiyana nodded slowly. The knowledge changed everything. A spear thrown at open ground meant nothing. To fight these beasts, his people needed a way to make the hidden things show themselves. And he had no idea how. But he had seen the enemy. That was where every plan had to begin.