***The Scent of Blood***
The wind shifted.
Alaric froze. His ears twitched, catching the faintest rustle of leaves and the rhythmic crunch of boots over snow. He wasn't alone.
The scent hit him next—copper and ash, familiar yet foreign. Human blood. But underneath it, something else. A scent like burning metal and rotting magic. Hunters.
He dropped low behind a fallen log, his breath still absent, but his body thrumming with energy. Every part of him ached to run, to fight, to tear. But something deeper held him back—the fragment of the man he had once been.
Voices floated through the trees.
"…no signs of disturbance. Are we sure this is the right burial site?"
"It has to be," a woman answered. "The Blood Moon rose last night. If the prophecy is true, he's already reborn."
Alaric's golden eyes narrowed. They were looking for him.
He moved, silent as moonlight, circling around the edge of the clearing. There were three of them—two men in armor etched with warding runes and a woman cloaked in black with a silver-bladed spear strapped to her back.
Her eyes suddenly snapped to his direction. "He's here."
Alaric reacted instinctively. He lunged from the shadows, claws outstretched. The first hunter barely had time to scream before Alaric knocked him into a tree with a sickening crack.
The second raised his blade, but Alaric dodged, spinning and slashing with practiced precision. Blood sprayed the snow.
Only the woman remained. She didn't flinch. Instead, she pulled back her hood, revealing eyes the color of storm clouds and a scar that crossed her jaw.
"You're stronger than the last time," she said. "Good. Maybe now you'll remember who I am."
Alaric snarled, his mind a blur of instinct and rage. But something in her voice gave him pause. There was sorrow in it. Recognition.
"Who are you?" he growled, the words rough and inhuman in his throat.
She stepped forward, slowly, lowering her weapon. "You knew me once. Before the fire. Before you died."
Alaric hesitated. In her face, behind the resolve and armor, he saw a flash of memory—laughter in a sunlit meadow, a girl with silver hair. His sister.
But before he could speak, a crack of thunder split the sky, and a new scent filled the air—something ancient and wrong. The hunters had not come alone.
The real danger was just arriving.