Scene 1: The Proposal
Late morning, Sentinel Watchhouse. Shadows hang long despite the sun.
The thick wooden shutters of the Sentinel Watchhouse creaked as they closed, muting the wind outside. Inside, the warmth from the central brazier offered little comfort. Around it stood six of Shitrantar's finest Niren, Ishan, Tarun, and three other seasoned Sentinels each with a line of worry drawn across their brow.
A map carved into aged bark lay across the center table, marked with animal sightings, recent attacks, and odd movements that didn't make sense.
Niren (arms crossed, calm but sharp):
"We've never had two attacks in one week. Not like this. They're not just hunting… they're probing."
Tarun scoffed.
"Wolves don't plan, Niren. Not like that."
Niren didn't look up.
"They do if someone's guiding them."
Silence settled like snow.
Ishan stepped forward, pointing at a cluster of marks near the southern ridge.
"They're avoiding known patrol routes, waiting until we're split. What if this isn't just instinct anymore?"
One of the older guards grunted.
"So, what? You want us to chase ghosts now?"
Before Niren could respond, the door opened. Softly.
Mani stepped in.
The room fell silent. The boy's scarf was wrapped tightly as always, his eyes wide but steady. He walked without hesitation, stopping just beside the table. No one spoke.
Then, in a clear, even voice—unlike his usual whispers—he said:
Mani:
"Use me."
Eyes flicked to Ishan, then back to the boy. Tarun raised an eyebrow.
Tarun (dryly):
"Speak up, boy. What did you say?"
Mani (unflinching):
"I can see them. Before they come. You need someone they don't notice."
Ishan moved beside Mani instinctively, a hand on his back.
"I think... he's volunteering to be bait."
Tarun stared at them both like they'd lost their minds.
Tarun:
"You want this kid to walk into a beast-infested forest so we can play hide and strike? That's your grand plan?"
Another guard joined in, his voice edged with disbelief.
"He's barely taller than a spear. If something goes wrong—"
Mani (quiet but firm):
"I'll signal."
Niren studied him in silence. His eyes flicked to Ishan.
Ishan (calmly):
"He's done it before. Three times now. Before anyone else noticed. He doesn't panic. He watches."
Tarun frowned.
"Even so, this crosses a line. Using a child as bait?"
Niren finally spoke. His voice was low and precise.
Niren:
"We're not using him. We're trusting him."
Another guard barked a bitter laugh.
"And if he's wrong?"
Niren:
"Then we'll intercept him before a beast gets close. Our scouts will be placed at every blind. No animal gets past without bleeding for it."
He looked at Mani directly.
"You understand what this means?"
Mani nodded once.
"I want to do it."
That was it.
No bravado. No trembling. Just clarity.
Ishan (to Niren):
"He's comfortable when I'm close. I'll lead his shadow detail."
Tarun threw up his hands.
"We're really doing this."
Niren (clapping Tarun's shoulder):
"If it works, we confirm intent. If it fails, we learn something. But I trust my team. And I trust this boy."
Tarun grumbled but said no more.
The plan formed quickly after that:
Mani would take a known path through the southern ridge where tracks had gone cold.
Five Sentinels, including Ishan and Niren, would follow from concealed positions.
If Mani saw something, he would lift his left hand—no words, no panic.
The rest would strike before anything reached him.
As the brazier's flames hissed and cracked, the moment stretched.
Outside, the wind stirred lightly, as if listening.
—
Scene 2: The Walk
South Ridge | Noon, day of the plan
The forest breathed slow and silent. Snow sifted through the branches like falling ash. Beneath that silence, six shadows moved like ghosts.
Mani walked alone.
His boots pressed gently into the half-frozen earth, leaving almost no mark. Every few steps, he paused not in fear, but in stillness. Listening. Watching. A bird's sudden flutter. A snapped twig that wasn't his. He absorbed it all.
To the untrained eye, it was just a child walking down a woodland trail.
But beneath the bark and snow, the forest was watching.
---
First Signal
A flicker in the underbrush. A subtle shift in silence.
Mani slowed. His right ear twitched. He didn't blink.
About fifteen paces ahead, beneath the low pine boughs, the snow looked... disturbed. Flattened in places, dragged in others—no paw prints, but a crescent-shaped groove that curved away unnaturally. Not fresh. Not human.
He raised his left hand slow, deliberate.
From the blind to his left, Ishan tensed. Twenty feet up in a camouflaged perch, he answered the signal by touching the tip of his spear to the bark in three soft knocks. One-two-three. Received.
Two trees over, Tarun made the same response with a click of his tongue barely audible, but it passed down the line.
Niren, crouched above a small ledge to Mani's rear-right, watched from behind the scope of a wooden optic. He gave no signal. He didn't need to. He had already moved.
---
Second Signal
Mani stepped past the groove, hands at his side again. For ten minutes, nothing changed. The wind stirred. The snow deepened.
Then, something off to his right. A ridge small, barely six feet. On its crest stood a red pine, its bark peeled. Beneath it, a silence that was too still. Birds had vanished.
Then he saw it.
Half-hidden, too still for an animal. A pair of eyes watching him. No reflection. Just depth. A predator's patience.
He exhaled through his nose. No fear. Only clarity.
Left hand up. A subtle jerk to the side. A second signal.
One knock. A pause. Two knocks.
From above: two soft clicks of breath. From Tarun's side: silence.
He was out of position. Purposefully. The trap had worked.
---
First Intercept
Niren moved like wind over stone. His leap from the ridge made no sound just a blur. His blade, long and blackened by frost, gleamed as it caught the sun.
The beast white-spotted, heavy with muscle lurched from the snow, startled too late. A burst of speed, claws flashing, jaws parting wide...
..but Niren was faster.
Steel kissed bone. The creature shrieked, a sound more bird than wolf. Its body spun mid-lunge and collapsed before it ever reached Mani's path.
Tarun broke from his cover just as a second shadow moved behind the trees a follower.
This time, Ishan was there.
Three thrown knives, all precise. One embedded in the beast's leg. The creature faltered, hissed, and tried to retreat.
It didn't make it past the third tree.
---
Second Intercept: The False Lull
The area went quiet. Mani kept walking.
He didn't smile. He didn't flinch. He just knew this wasn't over.
He looked up, scanning not the trail but the treetops. That's where it would come from. Birds had not returned. Snow fell too lightly here. A predator was coiled above, invisible in plain sight.
He didn't raise his hand this time. He simply stopped walking and looked up, holding still for three full breaths.
That was enough.
From a diagonal vantage, Ishan saw it too a pale blur between branches.
He whistled, once. A downward flick of his blade.
Tarun tossed a hooked weight over the limb. A crash. The creature above snarled and dropped straight into the net stretched below prepared in silence by Niren's team earlier that morning.
It thrashed, but five spears had already formed a wall. No one spoke. No one missed.
---
Aftermath
Mani exhaled and resumed walking, now toward the river bend the ending point of the path.
Tarun (half-grinning as he rejoined them):
"He doesn't miss a beat, does he?"
Ishan, shaking his head:
"Not one."
From the high rock above, Niren called the signal: a deep tone made from hollowed hornwood short burst. All clear.
The team converged behind Mani as he knelt at the river's edge, touching the melted frost where the ice was unnaturally thin.
He looked up not at them, but toward the treeline.
A whisper, maybe to himself:
"They're learning too."
Ishan heard it. And this time, he didn't dismiss it.
—
Scene 3: Watchers in the Snow
Dusk | Sentinel Camp Perimeter
The sun dipped low, barely more than a blood smear across the horizon. Smoke from small cookfires curled in gentle spirals as the trainees rested in their tents. Silence had returned but it was different now. Heavier.
Niren stood near the treeline, staring beyond the camp. His breath curled out in steady rhythm, but his eyes were unsettled. Ishan approached, carrying two metal mugs of heated sap-tea. He offered one wordlessly.
They stood together, quiet at first.
Ishan (low):
"You saw the movement too, didn't you?"
Niren didn't answer immediately. He sipped.
Tarun joined them, rubbing a cut on his forearm.
"It wasn't just a random strike today. That ridge formation… it felt like a shepherd's funnel. Draw the prey in, pick them off."
Niren (quietly):
"They knew the trail."
Ishan (brows raised):
"We've used that same route for three winters. No beast ever used it before."
Niren's voice dropped a notch.
Niren:
"They weren't after meat."
Tarun frowned.
"What do you mean?"
Niren nodded subtly toward the training tents.
"They're not going after hunters anymore. They're watching. Picking the young. The untrained. The unready."
A beat of silence.
Ishan looked down. "Like Mani."
Niren finally spoke the thought he had been turning for days.
Niren:
"They knew he was alone."
Tarun shifted, discomfort setting in.
Tarun:
"Beasts don't think like that. They react. Follow instinct."
Niren didn't look at him.
"And if that's changing?"
The weight of the question settled over them like new snow. Ishan stared into the fading light.
Ishan (slowly):
"I've seen cubs stand where they shouldn't. Birds not flying when they should. Ice forming in places that never froze. And today… five coordinated intercepts. All silent. All waiting."
Niren:
"Something's teaching them. Or something... is leading them."
Tarun tried to brush it off with a forced grin.
Tarun:
"You saying they're holding councils under the moon now?"
Niren didn't smile.
Ishan shook his head.
"Whatever's behind this, it's not just instinct. It's learning. Slowly. Quietly. Watching."
---
A Few Paces Away
Mani sat alone on the snow-bench, a distance from the firelight. His scarf wrapped around his mouth, his hands buried in his sleeves. He was staring at the forest again. Not fearfully.
Attentively.
One hand drifted across the saaran shard tied to his belt a dull, cracked thing. But faintly, very faintly, it trembled.
Only once.
He looked up again. Into the dark. Beyond what the eye could see.
---
Back at the Fireside
Tarun poked at the fire with a stick.
Tarun:
"You think we tell the council?"
Niren didn't answer at once. He turned to watch Mani.
Niren (quiet):
"Not yet. Let the others sleep without monsters."
Ishan nodded, but his eyes didn't leave the boy.
"He doesn't sleep much."
Niren's tone was soft.
"He sees too far."
Tarun threw another log into the fire, sparks dancing upward.
Tarun:
"Well, if he keeps seeing what we don't… maybe it's time we start looking where he looks."
Niren's jaw tightened.
Niren:
"No. It's time we walk where he walks. He's not the strange one here anymore."
And from the woods, unseen by all but Mani, two pale eyes blinked once.
Watching.
Waiting.
—
Chapter 8 Ends here…