The cottage rested at the edge of the forest, where the trees thinned and allowed a glimpse of sky that was never quite empty. Moss clung to its stones. Smoke wove lazily from the chimney. A stream hummed nearby, carrying its quiet song across roots and pebbles. It was a small world, a fragile one, but it had been enough for Ares. Ten years old, sharp-eyed, with a mind that cataloged every detail: the curve of his father's axe, the smell of pine resin, the way his mother hummed when she mended clothes.
Ares knew the rhythm of this place. He knew its limits and its small, safe routines. He had yet to understand the fragility of such a world.
His father chopped wood outside, each strike measured, each log falling with a satisfying precision. Eliza, his mother, hummed softly, hands working the fabric of a shirt. Her voice, warm and melodic, felt like a shield against every worry the boy had yet to name.
"Count the rings," his father said, lifting a freshly split log. "Each ring is a year it survived. One day, you'll count your own."
Ares squinted at the wood. "This one's old," he said.
"Old things endure," his father replied. "Remember that."
It was a life made of rhythm, of certainty. And it was about to be undone.
The forest fell silent.
Birdsong vanished. The stream seemed to hesitate in its course. Ares shivered. Something in the air had changed—the way the wind pressed against the trees, the way shadows bent differently. He looked toward the line of pines at the edge of the yard. Something waited there.
The first wolf emerged like a shadow shaped into fur. Gray and black, with eyes that reflected light in strange, impossible ways. Its motion was deliberate, measured. It was not hunting—it was observing, calculating. Then another stepped from the brush. Then another.
His father saw it first. He froze, axe in hand, his stance no longer casual but rigid with understanding. Ares noticed the tension coil through him, tight as wire.
"Eliza," his father said, his voice calm but sharp, carrying weight beyond reason.
"Take him. Run. Don't stop."
Ares felt the cold edge of reality for the first time. His father pushed him into his mother's arms. The world, the rhythm he had understood, shattered.
"What about you—" Ares began, but the word caught in his throat.
"Go!" His father's command was final, a slash cutting all other possibilities.
They ran. Branches clawed at their clothes. Roots tangled at their feet. Wolves followed, paws silent, a stalking shadow pressing closer. Ares's chest heaved; his mother's arms trembled, yet she carried him forward as if she could bear the world for the two of them.
They had only gone a short distance before Ares heard his father scream—not in fear, but in a defiance that no child could yet comprehend. He did not see the fall, only glimpsed the hand swinging one last time toward a wolf before the forest swallowed it.
The memory pressed itself into his mind, a jagged line that would never fade.
Hours blurred. Trees grew taller, darker, and closer. They stumbled, slipping over roots, tearing their clothes on thorns. Hunger, fear, and the weight of exhaustion pressed down on them. The wolves did not relent.
Then came the men.
They emerged from the forest like storms given shape. Steel flashed. Arrows sang through the air. Wolves fell in sprays of fur and blood. Relief surged through Ares, hot and immediate, but it was fleeting.
The men were worse than the wolves.
They moved with precision, with a practiced cruelty that no child should see. Chains hung from their belts. Shadows of suffering followed them: shackled humans dragged behind like animals. Faces turned upward, eyes hollow, and Ares understood with a cold certainty that the forest had delivered him from one predator only to throw him into another.
Eliza's hands tightened on his shoulders. Her lips pressed to his forehead. "Stay close," she whispered. But there was no comfort there. Only fear, coiled and waiting.
One of the men laughed, a low, chilling sound. "Lucky day," he said.
An arrow struck nearby, burying itself into the base of a tree. Eliza swayed, blood darkening the hem of her sleeve.
"Run, Ares," she said, her voice trembling. "Go!"
But Ares did not run. He could not. His small body froze, eyes wide, stomach knotting. The men's hands grabbed them both, pulling them into the firelight of their camp. Ropes replaced arms. The forest, once a sanctuary, became a witness to the first brutal lesson of his life: humans were often worse than beasts.
Eliza struggled, but her strength faltered. She cast a glance at Ares—full of apology he did not yet understand. She would not speak. She would only endure, for him.
Chains clicked around her wrists. The captain, a tall man with eyes like flint, surveyed the camp. "Secure her," he ordered. Obedience rippled through the others like a current.
Ares noticed the slaves who shuffled in the background. Hollow faces, bowed heads, silence where rebellion might have lived. They watched without intervention, and already the boy knew the difference between survival and morality: the weak sometimes lived, the complicit always watched.
Night fell. Firelight flickered across faces that knew nothing but hierarchy and cruelty. Eliza held Ares close, whispering stories of a world he could not yet touch. But her voice betrayed something that even the darkness could not hide: grief, exhaustion, and the weight of helplessness.
Then it came.
A howl. Low, deliberate, and close, cutting across the night. Ares felt it vibrate in his chest. The camp went still, men and slaves alike pausing as if the world itself had leaned in to listen.
Eliza tightened her grip. Ares mirrored her instinct, pressing his face to her side. He did not yet know what the sound meant. But he would learn: that the world had teeth and claws, both in fur and in human flesh. That survival demanded reckoning. And that one day, he would become something the forest and the men had underestimated.
The howl rose again, closer this time, and the night seemed to shift. The shadows danced differently. Something ancient had noticed them.
And the world had begun to teach Ares its first lesson.