Scene 1: Ominous Traces
Morning — Eastern Edge of the Sentinel Path, Shitrantar Woods
Frost still clung to the trunks like pale veins, threading up into the canopy as if the forest itself bled cold. A faint mist curled between the tall roots, thick enough to blur outlines but not thick enough to hide what watched between them.
The trainees moved in staggered groups, spaced by mentors. Each pair took turns scanning trails, identifying signs, and mimicking the observational drills they'd been taught hoof patterns, broken branches, droppings, direction of wind. It was the kind of morning that bred stillness in bones.
Mani walked silently a few steps behind Ishan, his scarf tucked up to his nose, mittens damp from gripping frost-bitten bark. He wasn't officially part of any team again—just trailing behind as always, like a shadow that never got assigned.
Ishan glanced back. "Keep close," he said softly.
Mani nodded, his gaze drifting to the ground as they moved deeper off the main path. The boy's senses worked like threads stretched across the forest—feeling not just the surface, but the strain beneath it.
It didn't take long.
They reached a bend near the gnarled oaks, where snow thinned under high branches. That's where Mani's eyes caught it. A claw mark. Thin. Clean. Too clean.
At first glance it looked like a simple predator trace but something was off. Three lines, nearly vertical, evenly spaced. Not natural. Repeated again six trees later. Again on a boulder near the slope.
Mani stopped. His head tilted. His finger raised.
Ishan followed his gaze. "Something wrong?"
Mani didn't speak. Just pointed. A short pause. Then, he stepped forward and scratched the air with three fingers slow and precise.
Ishan crouched beside the first tree. He touched the marks, pressed snow away. "Not made in a rush," he muttered. "Too careful."
Behind them, a louder group approached. Tarun, loud as usual, marched past with two younger trainees Kina and Orun laughing over some mistake Orun had made identifying fox dung.
"Looks like old bear territory," Tarun called over his shoulder after seeing Ishan kneeling. "They like scratching trees like that to mark."
"Not this way," Ishan murmured. He stood, brushing off his gloves.
Mani's eyes were still fixed on the pattern. He walked ahead quiet, deliberate pausing again at another tree. The same marks, same spacing.
"They're deliberate," Ishan said aloud, this time mostly to himself.
Tarun scoffed. "You two chasing ghosts again?"
Ishan ignored him. "Mani, you see anything else?"
Mani took a few steps away from the others. His boots sank lightly into soft ground near the edge of a shallow gully. He knelt slowly and pressed his palm against the earth then lifted it.
Melted. Slightly. A faint patch warmer than the rest of the frostline.
Something large had stood there not long ago. Too large for a common beast, and not long enough for it to have moved far.
Suddenly, a sharp crack echoed. Not threatening just the sound of a twig breaking, unnaturally straight. From the right. Then another one, to the left.
Both sounds were evenly spaced in time.
Ishan turned, narrowing his eyes.
"What are the odds," he muttered.
"What's that?" Tarun asked.
"Echoes. Like steps. Two beasts walking... almost in rhythm."
Tarun gave a lopsided grin. "Beasts don't march, Ishan."
Ishan didn't answer. His gaze drifted back toward Mani, who was now staring deeper into the woods still, but not stiff. Alert in a way Ishan had started to recognize wasn't fear.
It was knowing.
"Come on," Ishan said, his voice low. "We shouldn't split too far."
Mani followed without a word. But he looked back once more. His eyes stayed fixed on something the others didn't even glance toward.
The woods felt wrong today. Not loud, not quiet. Not even empty. Just watched.
As they regrouped with the rest of the training party, Ishan looked back toward the bend. The wind had picked up slightly, and already snow was falling to cover the last mark Mani had pointed to.
As if it had never been there at all.
—
Scene 2: Footprints Between Words
Midday – Small Clearing near the Inner Watchline
The training party halted for midday rest near a hollow clearing where the snow had gathered in slow drifts. Trees stood in odd patterns here five trunks forming a crude spiral, one of those silent forest accidents that made the older Sentinels wary.
Niren stood at the edge of the formation, arms crossed, scanning the woods. His eyes weren't just watching he was measuring. Something in the stillness didn't sit right with him.
Ishan approached. Mani followed behind, still silent, still watching.
"You saw the trees?" Ishan asked without pleasantries.
Niren nodded. "Too clean. Too far apart. No beast makes marks like that unless they're thinking about it."
A pause. Then:
"And beasts don't think."
Ishan hesitated. "Maybe that's changing."
Niren didn't reply right away. His eyes drifted to Mani. The boy stood a few paces away, arms folded, watching frost climb the bark of a dead tree.
"He saw it first?" Niren asked.
Ishan nodded. "Again."
The hunting captain studied the boy. "He's not guessing."
"No," Ishan said, quieter now. "He never is."
Niren turned slightly, as if about to speak more when a laugh broke through the treeline.
It wasn't mocking, not today. It was strange. Disjointed. A shape emerged from the far side of the clearing, trailing bits of torn leaves and sticks through his tangled hair.
Veer.
He was half-draped in a moth-eaten shawl, humming to himself and trailing one hand across the snow like he was brushing through water.
Most of the trainees turned away instinctively. Some muttered. Mani didn't move.
Niren stepped forward, blocking Veer's path gently.
"You shouldn't wander this deep."
Veer smiled wide. "Deep's just shallow turned sideways."
Niren exhaled. "This isn't your place anymore, Veer."
But Veer only smiled, stepping around him. "You always say that."
Then he walked straight toward Mani.
For a moment, the two simply stood.
Veer looked down at the boy. "Did you see it?"
Mani nodded once.
Veer tilted his head. "White and walking. Hummed like frost. Not supposed to walk on two legs."
Ishan's breath caught. Niren raised an eyebrow. "You saw the beast?"
Veer didn't respond. He just laughed and pointed at the nearest spiral tree. "It passed here. Big paws. Didn't make a sound. Like it knew how not to."
The wind shifted. Leaves curled at the edge of the clearing.
Veer crouched beside Mani and whispered, loud enough for only Ishan and Niren to catch:
"They're moving wrong because something woke up. Something old."
And then, as if his body forgot the conversation ever happened, Veer turned, singing again.
"Cold teeth... walking dreams... ice never melts where the silence screams..."
He faded into the woods, snow swallowing his footsteps. The clearing felt colder in his absence.
Ishan turned to Niren. "He knew."
Niren didn't answer right away. He rubbed the edge of his glove between thumb and finger, deep in thought.
"Calm beasts are becoming violent," he said finally, voice quiet.
"And now… they're moving in sync."
A branch snapped somewhere in the deeper forest. Distant. But not distant enough.
—
Scene 3: The Silence That Moved
Afternoon – Eastern Trail, Forest Edge
The party had resumed their training exercises, this time along the eastern slope an uneven trail scattered with patches of broken twigs and ice-slick rocks. The Sentinels moved cautiously, watching the younger ones as they practiced identifying faint trails and disturbed snow beds.
Mani stayed at the rear. He wasn't watching the ground.
He was listening again.
A stillness had returned. Not the usual hush of snow-muted woods—but a strange quiet, as if the trees themselves had held their breath.
His steps slowed. He looked to his right into the deeper part of the woods and stopped.
He raised a hand slowly, fingers twitching. Then, without speaking, tugged on Ishan's cloak.
Ishan turned.
"Something again?" he asked under his breath.
Mani nodded then pointed.
At first, there was nothing.
Then a flicker. Just past the far birch trunk. A white blur. Too tall. Too fluid. Standing on its hind legs like a man... then dropping down on all fours again and vanishing into the fog.
Ishan's hand dropped instinctively to his short-blade. "That's not just a hare."
But before he could react further..
A howl.
Not from one direction but two.
The air split with snarls as three beasts burst from the left side of the slope barking, coordinated, heads low, moving together. Not wild. Not disoriented. A formation.
The trainees screamed. One slipped on the rocks. Another froze, paralyzed.
"STAY LOW! BEHIND ME!" Niren's voice cracked through the panic like thunder.
In a blur, the veteran dropped into a stance—his short-spear humming with frost. The nearest beast lunged at him. One thrust clean, efficient drove the spear through its neck.
Another snarled toward the group.
Before it reached, Ishan intercepted, pushing two kids aside and taking a shallow gash to his arm in the process. He spun and kicked the beast off balance before striking its flank.
The third turned toward Mani.
For a split second, the cub-like frame of the young boy stood still as the snow flurried around him.
Then—
A flash.
Veer.
He appeared like smoke from the trees no weapon in hand, just his voice.
Veer (chanting, like an old war cry): "Fire sleeps beneath the frost! Dance backward, ice-born! The child sees you!" as it was meant for someone else to hear...
The beast froze mid-lunge. Its eyes twitched. Something in that moment in Veer's presence unnerved it.
That hesitation was enough.
Niren's blade sliced in a clean arc, knocking the creature away from Mani.
"Fall back! Group tight!" he shouted.
The remaining beasts fled into the trees, whining not like defeated prey, but like soldiers pulled back too early.
Silence fell again.
Only the panting of the young, the dripping of blood onto snow.
Veer stood still, facing the woods, his eyes glassy.
"They don't run for fear," he murmured, "They run for orders."
Ishan turned to him. "Orders?"
But Veer didn't answer. His lips curled into a whisper-song.
Niren stepped beside Ishan, still breathing heavily.
"That was coordinated," he said, voice low. "They didn't come to kill. They came to measure us."
Ishan wiped the blood from his sleeve.
"They're probing."
Niren nodded. "And that means something… or someone… is sending them."
He turned to the shaken trainees. "Training's over for today. We're not in the Shitrantar we thought we knew."
Then he looked back once more at the treeline, where the strange hare had vanished.
And this time, he didn't doubt Mani.
—
Chapter 7 Ends here…