Giant wolves tore the attackers in half. Armored soldiers screamed, fell, ran. But the army was vast. And ruthless. Losses didn't stop them.
"This isn't a battle. It's a meat grinder."
Screams. Blood. A throat ripped open with a single jerk. Arrows thudding into ribcages.
—"No prisoners!"
—"Catch the werewolves! The biggest ones! They're worth a fortune!"
Siris gulped for air. Tears ran down her cheeks. She didn't know if this was horror, pity, or both at once.
They reached the first rock. The werewolves—the small ones—scrambled upward into a narrow cleft where they could hide. Siris dragged the children there, too.
"If we get out… if any of us gets out… that will already be a victory."
The battle's echo stayed behind. But it would ring in their ears for a long time. And in their dreams.
Night didn't arrive—it fell, like a dead bird from the sky.
Darkness tore the horizon and swaddled the settlement in smoke that drifted between the houses, lazily creeping into the cracks, as if Death were already drawing the first breath from everyone.
For a moment, everything froze.
Suspiciously calm.
Then—thunder, a scream, timber splitting.
Hell began.
From the mountain pass came not an army—a horde.
Not knights. Not saviors.
Beasts in human shape—the remnants of races, warped, mutilated, reduced to a blood-hungry herd.
Dwarves with twisted faces—in plate smeared with congealed black blood that time itself could not wash away.
Their armor was twisted together from the wreckage of old mail, scorched and eaten through by the blood of hundreds slain.
On the shoulders—dents from beast jaws; on the breastplates—stitched tears where teeth were still visible, embedded in the metal.
Elves—pale, eyes fogged, blue veins pulsing beneath. They fought not with sight, but with hearing and scent.
Demons—scorched, shackled in chains, wounds raw, bodies stitched together piece by piece.
Beastkin and humans—in shackles, hurled first like meat. They did not fight. They fell.
At their head—a chieftain, a rider in a red cloak, filthy with blood.
His armor was cobbled from everything: a demonic helm, a human cuirass, dwarven pauldrons.
All of it stolen, reforged, hammered into death.
He drew his sword and snarled:
—"Move! Take the werewolves alive! Their hides, teeth, blood—we'll sell it all!"
—"Drag anyone who's still breathing!"
—"And if they're not breathing—cut them open to make sure!"
—"And if we fall?!" someone shouted.
—"Then you become the merchandise! I'll sell you, too!"
Laughter. Jeering, feral. Someone spat, someone shoved a neighbor, someone pulled a knife.
And in that instant, everything changed.
From the smoke, from the dark, from the shadow that an hour ago had been a village, they came.
Werewolves.
Dozens. Giant. Bristling. Furious.
Eyes like burning coals. Muscles like stone. Jaws like caverns of death.
The first leapt from a roof—sailed over the crowd, tore two demons apart in midair, landed on a third's shoulders, and snapped his spine with a single wrench.
The second crushed three at once by dropping straight onto them. One was a dwarf with a two-handed axe, but he didn't even have time to swing.
His head flew aside before the body fell.
The slaughter began.
The soldiers broke. Fear outweighed discipline.
—"Hold the line, hold the line!" one shouted, but they were already shoving him forward.
—"You've got the shield—you go!" another snapped.
—"You go yourself, I'm not dying yet!"
Someone threw down a sword and ran. Another snatched it up—and hurled it at a werewolf.
The werewolf didn't even slow. It simply rolled over him with its paw.
Blood ran over stone, sluicing into the ditches.
Houses burned. People burned.
Screams at every step. Groans. Mouthfuls of blood.
One werewolf ripped open an elf's chest, grabbed the sword from his hands, and rammed it straight into another demon's mouth.
But the werewolves fell, too.
One—with a dozen arrows in his chest.
Another was finished off by a tight knot of demons with spears of fire, stabbing him in the back while he already lay on the ground.
And threaded through all of it—animal treachery.
They shoved each other forward.
They abandoned their own.
They tore spoils from the backs of the dying—if it looked like an amulet.
—"Grab the live wolves! We can sell them before they croak!" one yelled.
—"Throw the slaves at them—keep them busy!"
And the fight went on.
No orders. No tactics.
Only death, teeth, claws, fury, and a hellish night.
Screams. Growls. Death.
The battlefield turned into a butcher-god's kitchen, where every blow was a new course and every cry a sauce made of screams.
—"HE'S THE PACK LEADER! KILL HIM!!" the cutthroat chief shouted, pointing his sword at the silver-furred werewolf mowing down his squad like grass.
—"ALL ON HIM!"
The scum surged forward—demonic mercenaries, mages with staves, men with tridents.
But he didn't run. Didn't growl.
He simply walked. And everything around him started to die.
A demon with an axe—spine snapped.
An elf with twin swords—broken clean in two.
A dwarf in full war-gear—hurled into the flames along with an entire section of a house.
He didn't move like a warrior.
Like a hurricane. Like an explosion. Like a force of nature.
A leap—and the chief and his horse went tumbling aside.
A dull crash. A rasp. Pain.
The chief was pinned beneath his own mount. The blade slipped from his hand.
And in that instant—claws in his chest.
In his eyes—feral terror.
From his mouth—"grllllb…" and a gush of blood. Even at death's edge, he clamped both hands around the beast's paw.
And that was enough.
—"NOW! FIRE!!" the demonic mage roared.
Flame erupted point-blank into the werewolf's chest.
Meat ignited. Fur burned away. Ribs—on open fire.
And in that moment…
…he went berserk.
The werewolf howled—not from pain.
From rage.
He was no longer a beast. He was a catastrophe.
Each swipe of his paw tore off arms, heads, whole torsos.
His body burned, skin melting—and still he fought on.
One mage—snapped in half.
One demon—ripped in two by his teeth like a sack of blood.
Three with spears—ran him through at once, but he spun and carried them on his body, skewering them on themselves.
Five struck at once. Deep. Into the chest. The neck. The groin.
And then—he howled. So hard the earth shuddered.
It wasn't a cry of pain.
It was a command.
And the werewolves broke loose.
All of them.
Even the wounded. Even those who could no longer stand.
Even those burning alive—leapt and tore.
Women. Children. The old.
This wasn't a battle. It was pure, feral revenge.
The fire burned out. The screams faded. The air went still.
Night ran its course.
And in the field where nothing breathed anymore…
Amid smoke, corpses, ruined huts, and meat strewn across the grass…
One werewolf stood, steady as a shadow.
Wounded. Recently aflame.
His chest—split open, muscles exposed.
An eye—clouded with blood. A bone jutted from his shoulder.
But he breathed.
And when the sun cut through the smoke, the first ray fell across his back.
The body began to change.
Fur—receded. Claws—contracted. A maw—turned into a face.
Where the wolf had stood, a man remained.
Naked. Wounded. Blood-slick.
But alive.
He lifted his eyes.
Looked out over the shattered ground.
Not with awe. Not with tears.
With emptiness.
Because now—everything inside had died.
The forest breathed silence.
No birdsong. No creaking boughs. No wind.
Too calm.
When hundreds of dead still steam a bloody mist—nature itself holds its breath.
Through that half-living hush, they slipped.
Gray cloaks. Covered faces. Soft steps.
They didn't speak. Didn't breathe aloud.
Even the weapons were wrapped in cloth so they wouldn't glint.
Just three dozen.
At their head—a thickset, balding man with a necklace of teeth.
A slaver.
—"Smell that?" he whispered, stopping to draw the air in.
—"Death. Recent. Warm. We're close."
One of the mercenaries muttered carefully: —"Something's wrong here, sir. The forest is mute."
—"All the better, fool. It means those monsters are weak now.
By daylight they can barely hold their shape. And we're hunting a champion."
He crushed the map in his fist, drawn by a traitor's hand.
On it—the exact place.
A werewolf village. Former slaves. Former champions.
And among them was one who tore opponents in half in the arenas even before his true strength awakened.
A super-beast. Perfect merchandise.
The slaver rubbed his hands.
—"We take him. Alive. At least one. It'll be the highest bid the arenas have seen in a decade."
Behind him, like shadows, walked several mages equipped with control gear.
Fetters of enchanted silver. Cords that lock the muscles. Sleep draughts.
They didn't know that only hours ago not even gods could have endured the screaming here.
They didn't know their "trophy's" body still trembled from the fight.
That under the forest canopy, fur still smoldered.
That the blood was still hot.
They thought they'd come for goods.
But they themselves were walking—into a trap the dead had made.