Rylan Thornwood's Arc

Chapter 1 of 1

Rylan Thornwood had chased a beast made of stories for six years, and tonight he finally decided the stories weren't enough. He crouched by a dying fire, listening to an old trapper swear the green stag was real. Its pelt shone like wet moss, the man said. No hunter had ever brought it down. Rylan had heard the same tale in a dozen towns, each one bigger, each one emptier. Rumors didn't leave tracks. He could not kill a ghost. He pressed the trapper for something solid. A direction. A footprint. Anything. The old man only laughed and held out a stained book. "Belonged to a hunter who found it," he said. "Found it, then didn't come back." Rylan took the journal. Dried blood crusted the cover and darkened the edges of the pages. He opened it near the fire. The early entries described the same green deer from the campfire tales. But the later pages changed. The dead hunter had drawn a map. He had marked a bog, a ring of stones, and a spot deep in the marsh where the stag always fed. Rylan's chest tightened. This was no rumor. This was a trail. He left at dawn and followed the map for two days. The ground turned soft, then wet, then black. On the third morning he saw it. The green stag stood in the reeds, exactly where the journal promised. Its coat glowed in the gray light. Rylan held his breath and raised his bow. Then the stag lowered its head to feed, and Rylan saw what fed beside it. A plant rose from the bog, taller than a man. Broad purple traps hung open on thick stalks, their inner teeth slick and wet. The stag grazed between them without fear. The traps did not snap. They waited. Rylan read the map again. The hunter's final mark sat right here, inside the plant's reach. The blood on the journal made sense now. The stag was not the danger. It was the bait. The thing that guarded it had eaten the last hunter who got close. He lowered the bow. One shot would spook the stag into the reeds, and the chase would pull him straight through those open jaws. He could not take the pelt without passing the guardian. Rylan backed away slowly and crouched behind a fallen trunk. For six years the beast had been a story he could never reach. Now he had found it. He knew exactly where it fed, and exactly what killed anyone who tried. He opened the bloodied journal to a blank page. He needed a plan to get past the purple jaws, and he needed it before the stag moved on.