The night was long, cold, and restless.
Around the second hour after midnight, a woman screamed in pain inside one of the wooden houses near the center of the settlement. The midwives moved quickly. Moments later, a child was born. A boy. His cries were strong, sharp, alive. The women exchanged relieved glances. Outside, the rain continued to fall.
But the night was not yet finished.
As the darkness slowly faded and the sky began to pale, another woman went into labor. The wind was colder now, the rain heavier, soaking the earth and turning the ground into thick mud. When the sun finally rose above the horizon, the second child was born.
This one did not cry.
The boy lay still, weak, his breath shallow and broken. His chest barely moved. The women tried to stimulate him, rubbed his skin, whispered prayers—but nothing changed. In this land, weakness in a male child was not a tragedy. It was a verdict.
Everyone knew the rule. Weak male children did not live. They could not become warriors. They would only burden the village.
The decision was immediate.
The child was wrapped in an old, damp cloth. No words were spoken. Soldiers took him from his mother's arms and carried him behind the village, beyond the last houses, to an ancient pit hidden among trees and rocks. It was deep, steep, and unforgiving. The same place where all weak male children were thrown.
Without ceremony, they dropped him.
The infant fell through the air, silent. His small body struck branches on the way down, snapping them, slowing the fall. Then stone. Then more stone. Finally, he landed in thick mud at the bottom of the pit.
He did not die.
He was the only one who ever survived the fall.
At the bottom of the pit, darkness ruled. A cave opened into the earth, narrow but deep. From within it emerged a wolf—large, scarred, with its back right leg broken and its face marked by old wounds. Two weeks earlier, it had fought its own pack and fallen into the pit. Since then, it survived by feeding on the bodies of the children thrown down from above.
The wolf approached the infant.
It did not kill him.
This was the first living child it had ever seen survive the fall.
Night came quickly. The storm grew violent. The cold became unbearable. Rain poured into the pit, turning the ground into sludge. The wolf dragged the child into the cave, away from the wind and rain, leaving him there.
Later, as the temperature dropped further, the wolf returned. Survival demanded warmth. The wolf lay beside the child, pressed against him. Not out of mercy—but necessity. If the child died, the warmth would be lost.
That night, both survived.
The years passed.
The child grew in darkness, feeding on what the wolf brought him—remains of other children, scraps of flesh, whatever could be found. There were days of hunger, when no bodies were thrown. Days when both starved. Six years passed this way. Six years of mud, bones, darkness, and silence.
Above ground, life continued.
The boy born at night grew strong. He was the son of the village advisor. At six years old, he trained with other children, learning to hunt. One day, while practicing his aim, he chased a rabbit that fled deeper into the forest. He circled through the trees, loosed arrows, testing his skill, until finally he struck the animal down.
Rabbit in hand, he began to walk home.
That was when he heard it.
The sound of falling stone.
He stopped.
Drawn by curiosity, he followed the noise and came upon the pit. He barely glanced at it—until another sound came from below. Movement. Struggle. The child from the pit was trying, once again, to climb out. His fingers slipped. Stones fell. He dropped back down.
The hunter boy stepped closer.
He looked into the pit.
And saw a living child.
At that moment, the boy in the pit felt something—eyes upon him. He turned his face upward. But he saw nothing. The hunter boy had already dropped to his knees, hiding himself. Fear froze him. He slowly let the rabbit fall from his hands and ran.
He ran all the way home.
That evening, he asked his mother what lay within the pit. She questioned him sharply—why he would go there, why he would risk falling. He answered that he had followed a rabbit. That he was curious.
She fell silent.
Days passed.
The hunter boy returned.
At that moment, the child from the pit had managed, through sheer desperation, to climb out. Mud-covered, shaking, wild-eyed, the two children locked eyes.
Both froze.
Then the pit-born child fled into the forest.
The following day, he tried to rescue the wolf from below but failed. From a distance, the hunter boy watched, hidden. Fear kept him away. But he threw food into the pit for the wolf when soldiers came, hiding whenever they approached.
Days passed like this.
Eventually, the hunter boy acted.
Together, they freed the wolf.
Trust began slowly. The hunter boy brought food, water, clothing. He taught the other child words. Sounds. Meaning. Two years passed. The pit-born child no longer lived below. He lived in the forest.
They hunted together.
That night, the forest was quiet in a way that felt wrong.
The boy and the wolf were resting near the edge of the trees, the fire long dead, only embers glowing faintly in the dark. The air was cold, heavy. Then it happened—
a low growl, close. Too close.
Out of the darkness, three wolves emerged.
One of them lunged straight toward the boy.
Before he could fully react, his wolf threw itself in front of the other two, blocking their path, teeth bared, snarling fiercely. It stood between them and the boy, refusing to let them pass.
The third wolf slammed into the boy, knocking him onto his back.
Its weight crushed the air from his lungs. The wolf snapped at his face, jaws wide, teeth inches from his throat. Instinct took over. The boy raised his arm to protect his face, and the wolf's teeth sank deep into his forearm.
Pain exploded through him.
He screamed, but did not let go.
With his free hand, shaking, fighting against panic, he reached for the knife made from rabbit bones at his side. The wolf thrashed violently, trying to tear his arm apart, but the boy forced the blade forward and drove it into the wolf's neck.
Once.
Twice.
The wolf went still.
At the same time, only a few steps away, his wolf fought the other two. It managed to tear into one of them, killing it after a brutal struggle. The last wolf was badly wounded, staggering, blood pouring from its side.
As it collapsed to the ground, the boy ripped himself free, jumped up despite the pain, and without hesitation finished the third wolf.
Silence returned to the forest.
Both of them stood there, shaking, bloodied, breathing heavily. The boy's arm was torn and bleeding badly. His wolf limped, wounded but alive.
They had survived.
That night, they stayed awake until morning, sitting close to each other—not out of comfort, but because they both understood one thing clearly now:
From this point on, survival would only get harder.
Two more years passed.
At ten years old, the hunter boy stole a knife from his father—a rare blade. Only two existed. One owned by the advisor. One by the lord himself. He gave it as a gift.
The pit-born child fashioned a spear from stone and wood, keeping the knife as a blade.
Not long after receiving the knife, that same night, a wild boar burst from the undergrowth.
The beast was massive, furious, and fast.
The wolf ran in wide circles around it, snapping and dodging, doing everything it could to draw the boar's attention away from the boy.
Seizing the moment, the boy hurled his spear.
The weapon struck the boar in the back.
With a deafening scream, the boar turned and charged straight at him.
It slammed into the boy with brutal force, its tusks tearing into his stomach, the impact cracking his ribs and throwing him to the ground.
Gasping for air, blood pouring from the wound, the boy pulled the knife free and stabbed upward — again and again — into the boar's neck and head.
The beast collapsed on top of him.
The wolf struggled to pull the dead weight away as the boy lay broken beneath it, barely conscious, fighting to breathe through the pain.
They survived the night — but it left its mark on both of them.
Winter passed.
One day, deep in the forest, a bear emerged.
Huge. Silent. Watching.
It attacked without warning.
The boy and the wolf fought it for hours — striking, retreating, bleeding. The bear's claws tore into the boy's chest and left arm, carving deep wounds, while the wolf was thrown aside more than once.
By the time darkness began to fall, all three were exhausted.
With the last of his strength, the boy drove his blade into the bear's back.
The beast roared in agony, its scream shaking the forest, but it did not fall.
The boy staggered, barely able to stand. The bear hesitated, wounded, considering retreat.
At that moment — arrows flew.
One struck the bear, then another.
The hunter boy emerged from the trees, firing again and again until the bear finally collapsed, lifeless, into the earth.
The boy who had survived the pit fell to his knees beside it — then collapsed.
The wolf crawled to his side, wounded but alive.
For the first time since the morning he was thrown into the pit, someone had arrived in time.
End of Chapter One.