Scene 1: The Council of Stone
Setting: Old Granary Chamber, Shitrantar's Council Hall – Next day Evening
The old granary, now used only for important gatherings, smelled of cracked wheat and age-old wood. Snowlight poured through a single circular window high above, dust motes glittering in the beam like slow-falling stars.
Twelve gathered five village elders wrapped in ceremonial woolen shawls and adorned with antler-etched bangles, and seven senior Sentinels. Some were weathered like bark, others hunched with memory, and all bore the silence of command. The center of the room held a wide stone table, marked with old maps and claw-scarred from generations of debate.
At the head stood Niren, hands clasped behind his back.
Elder Dhaav (stern, bearded):
"You bring us here after a single day's chaos, Niren. Children get frightened. Even cubs can wound."
Elder Suja (wiser, gentler):
"There's more to this, isn't there?"
Niren looked around. His voice was low but sharp.
Niren:
"This isn't a one-day worry. It's a pattern. We've seen strange shifts in beast behavior, but this this was coordinated. Five beasts, in five waves. Not one misstep. No sound. Not instinct. Intent."
Old Sentinel Bhaarat (voice rough):
"Even if that's true, it could be coincidence. Herding behavior maybe. We've seen snow-leopards flank together in famine."
Niren (flatly):
"These weren't starving. And they weren't hunting meat."
A pause. Eyebrows rose.
Dhaav:
"Then what were they hunting?"
Niren stepped forward. His tone cooled.
Niren:
"They were hunting children. Not all. Only the ones away from the group. The unguarded. The youngest."
Suja leaned forward, eyes narrowing.
"You're certain?"
Niren nodded.
Niren:
"We tested it. I used one of the trainees as bait."
Gasps. Murmurs.
Elder Ankit (disbelieving):
"You endangered a child?"
Bhaarat (angrily):
"On what basis?"
Niren didn't waver.
Niren:
"On his basis."
He turned slightly, and a small figure stepped from behind the shadow of the door. Mani, scarf pulled up, hands behind his back. Eyes clear. Quiet.
Dhaav (half rising):
"You risked us all on a half-speaking boy with no training?!"
More murmurs.
Niren (sharp):
"Watch your tone."
The air cooled.
Niren:
"He warned us before every wave. Gave the right signal every time. That is not a fluke. That is sight."
Elder Suja folded her hands in thought.
Suja:
"And if he's right? If this child sees danger before it comes..."
Dhaav scoffed.
"Then let him walk on water too."
Niren finally placed his palms on the table. The room stilled.
Niren:
"I've been a Sentinel for twenty winters. Led hunts no one else would. If I say this child's instinct is something we've never seen before, you'll believe it. Not because he's special because I say he is."
He looked each of them in the eye.
Niren:
"And because the frost is sharpening. Something is coming. And he may be our only warning before it arrives."
Silence followed. Suja gave a slow nod. Bhaarat looked uneasy. Dhaav didn't speak again.
Mani remained quiet. But his hand had drifted to the shard tied to his belt.
And it thrummed. Just once.
—
Scene 2: Sentinel Strategy
Late Afternoon – Northern Treeline
The wind shifted over the northern ridge, tugging gently at the branches like an ancient breath. The snow here thinned, revealing slivers of cold-browned grass and stones worn smooth by years of silence. Hidden beneath a ledge of frozen rock, five Sentinels crouched low.
Niren spread a crude map on the ground, scratched into bark with ash. The inked zones flickered with the breath of torchlight, fading fast.
Niren:
"We'll sweep in three pairs. Small arcs. Overlap just enough to spot shadows, not spook them. No torches. No whistles."
Kita, older and sharp-eyed, squinted at the terrain marks.
Kita:
"Coordinated beasts now, is it? The woods've lost their way."
Tarun (half-joking):
"Or we've just grown soft. Winter beasts don't usually march."
Ravi:
"But something's different. That much we know."
Ishan, silent until now, spoke up. His tone wasn't uncertain just calm.
Ishan:
"Mani comes with me."
Kita blinked.
Kita:
"Your brother's shadow? Why risk dragging him out there?"
Ishan:
"He's not part of the sweep. I'll say he's fetching herbs. Learning terrain. That's all."
Niren's gaze lingered on Ishan for a beat too long. Then he nodded once.
Niren:
"Fine. Keep him close. Listen, too."
They broke into teams. Tarun and Kita moved east. Ravi alone took the slope leading toward the den rocks. Ishan and Mani walked west into the birch gulch quiet under its crisscross canopy.
An hour passed under falling dusk. The forest grew denser, quieter. Crows turned their heads but made no sound.
Mani stopped.
He reached out not loud, not sudden and tugged lightly on Ishan's fur sleeve. He pointed down, just past a curled set of thorns.
The tracks weren't fresh. But they were perfect.
Three lines, parallel, evenly spaced. Not a sprint. A march. Too even for wild paws. Each claw print had melted slightly at the center, like heat had pulsed from the ground then refrozen.
Ishan crouched.
Ishan (murmured):
"No beast does this..."
He picked up a shard of fur half-fused to the frost. It crackled faintly, unnaturally.
Ishan (thoughtfully):
"It's warm... even now."
Mani watched the treeline. His eyes lingered not on the tracks but on where they led: deeper, toward a hollow that no birds flew over.
Night draped the forest in silence, but the Sentinels moved like shadows.
Their formation was lean six pairs split across the ridgeline and lower trail, each positioned to triangulate around the child. Mani stood alone in a small snow-swept clearing, eyes wide, breath shallow.
But he wasn't afraid.
A thin copper pendant hung beneath his coat, gently tapping his chest a signal charm that would rattle only if he moved too quickly. He wouldn't. Not until he had to.
Behind the tree line, Ishan watched from his vantage point beside Tarun, crouched with bow and knife. Niren waited northward with the second squad, watching for breaches. They'd practiced for this all afternoon: no words, only gestures, flicks of fingers, mirrored breath. Mani was the signal flare. Every twitch mattered.
Minutes passed.
Then Mani saw it.
A flicker. No not just a beast. Four. Moving in a pattern, a triangle with an outer ring. Wolf-like, but not quite. Their heads tilted in unison. Not chasing. Stalking.
He slowly lifted his hand. Closed it. Two fingers pointed left, one twitch toward the right.
Sign: Group of three, deviation of one.
Tarun tensed. Ishan narrowed his eyes—yes. Movement mirrored in the snow behind the lower ridge. One lone beast circling from the side. He tapped twice on his own shoulder, then raised his palm.
Confirmed. Prepare to close.
Mani blinked and saw something more a pulse in the snow, almost like the air itself grew colder before the beasts came. He crouched, placed two fingers to the ground, then swiftly made a small spiral sign.
Niren, watching through narrowed eyes from a nearby ridge, responded with a single hand rise.
Engage.
The squad burst into movement. Arrows flew from hidden brush. Two Sentinels swept in from the back while others blocked the side runner. It was clean clinical. In less than two minutes, five beasts were downed or scattered. No wounds. No errors.
But it wasn't over.
As the silence returned, Ishan approached Mani, hand on the boy's shoulder. Mani's eyes were still fixed to the northern trees.
Ishan (quietly):
"Did we miss one?"
Mani nodded, just once.
Then, across the clearing, from the shadows of the ice-kissed pine, something stood. It wasn't charging. It wasn't hiding.
It was watching.
A beast twice the size of the others, snow-white with slashes of blue across its chest, and upright. Standing like a man.
It didn't run. It turned and walked back into the woods calm, deliberate.
They didn't speak as they returned to the village perimeter. Niren made no speech. Ishan offered no analysis. They simply moved like the wind: fast, precise, and unseen.
But Veer had seen.
From atop the watchtower near the old granary, the madman watched the treeline through narrowed, frost-ringed eyes. His coat flapped loosely around him. Mani glanced up at him once. Their gazes met across the courtyard.
Veer raised one finger. Slowly.
Veer (muttering):
"Not the wolves. The wind behind them. That's what breathes…"
Tarun (to Ishan):
"Was he watching us?"
Ishan:
"Maybe always has been."
As they filed away into their homes and barracks, the wind picked up once more. No howls, no roars just a faint, eerie crackling, like ice forming where it shouldn't.
And from the shadows, far beyond the village's gaze, the upright beast sat beside a frozen pond, etching patterns into the snow with a claw.
Icerion Beast (thinking):
"The boy sees too clearly. Too soon."
He turned to a pair of lesser beasts kneeling nearby once solitary predators, now obedient hounds.
Icerion Beast:
"Next time, strike the ones not yet ready."
The snow fell gently again soft, unthreatening. But beneath it, war had already begun.
—
Scene 3: Shadows in the Trees
Night – Eastern Ridge
Training had ended. The younger ones were walking back with flushed cheeks and sore legs. Ishan lingered at the edge of the woods, scouting a ridge he didn't recall seeing clearly before.
Ishan:
"Stay here," he told Mani, motioning to a large stone half-buried in snow. "Marker rock. Don't move until I return."
Mani nodded once.
Ishan vanished over the rise.
Minutes passed.
The trees were unnaturally still. The air held no birdsong. Only the faint trickle of distant ice cracking in tree hollows.
Mani's eyes slowly rose drawn by something.
Up the slope, half-concealed in a snow-thick thicket, stood a tall figure.
It wasn't just a beast.
It watched. It breathed slowly. The limbs were furred, but the shoulders were upright. Steam curled from its mouth measured, like thought.
Its eyes, pale blue with shifting specks of white, met Mani's.
It didn't growl. It simply observed.
Mani stepped back.
No scream.
No run.
Just a slow drop to the ground, fingers pushing aside snow. He arranged three pebbles in a triangle. Then broke a nearby twig and placed it pointing north.
Ishan's voice was behind him.
Ishan:
"...Good. I see it."
Sword drawn in seconds. Eyes scanning. But there was nothing now. Just snow and empty hush.
They advanced carefully toward the slope.
Where the creature had stood was now a frost-burned patch of snow. A mark lay at the center etched in perfect symmetry, as if heat had cut into the ice.
A crescent, ringed by seven dots.
Mani didn't speak. Just stared.
Later, back in Ishan's quarters...
By candlelight, Mani took a charcoal shard and drew the symbol again once, with absolute precision. Ishan watched in silence.
Beast with intelligence and power, never seen before. "Ishan's thinking out loud"
Far beyond the ridge, hidden beneath snow-laced brush...
A beast crouched far taller than any man.
—
Chapter 9 Ends here....