The trees here were ancient—gnarled blackthorn and twisted shadowpine, their trunks scarred with age and their branches woven so thick that even midday sun barely touched the forest floor. The air was cold, damp, heavy with the smell of moss and decay. This was a place where sound died, where even the wind seemed reluctant to stir the leaves.
But something had violated that silence.
A scar had been carved through the canopy, a jagged wound where branches had been sheared away and trunks splintered like kindling. The path of destruction cut through the forest at a steep angle, marked by scattered debris—twisted metal, shredded canvas, shattered glass glinting faintly in the dim light.
At the end of that path lay the plane.
It was a clunky, two-winged aircraft, the kind that belonged in black-and-white photographs, not the skies of Echogard. Its frame was riveted steel, now crumpled and torn. One wing had been ripped clean off, embedded in the trunk of a massive trees twenty feet away, its surface scorched black. The other wing hung at a grotesque angle, bent backward, its struts snapped like broken fingers.
The fuselage had split open along its belly, the metal peeled back like the skin of rotting fruit. The cockpit was a ruin—glass shattered, control panel crushed inward, the leather seat visible through the wreckage, torn and stained dark.
Blood.
It was everywhere.
Splattered across the crumpled nose of the plane in thick, arterial sprays. Smeared along the jagged edges of torn metal. Pooled in the shallow crater the impact had gouged into the earth, mixing with oil and rainwater into a black-red slick that reflected the pale light filtering through the canopy.
The ground around the wreckage was churned and broken, littered with debris. A leather flight cap, soaked through. A torn map, its edges burned. A single glove, fingers still curled as if grasping something that was no longer there.
The Aether Rotator—what was left of it—had been torn from its housing and lay half-buried in the dirt several feet from the main wreckage. The reinforced steel casing was split open like a cracked egg, revealing the twisted brass housings that had once held the crystals. The crystals themselves were gone—not shattered, but missing entirely. Taken, perhaps, or ejected during the catastrophic failure. All that remained were the empty brass cradles, their mounting springs bent and useless.
The resonance mechanism was a ruin. The tuning forks—delicate instruments of treated iron, each one precisely calibrated to a specific harmonic frequency—were bent and snapped, their perfect pitches destroyed. Without them, the crystals could not be coaxed into releasing their energy in controlled pulses. The clockwork governor, the mechanical heart that regulated the hammer strikes against the forks, had been ripped apart. Its gears and springs were strewn across the forest floor like the entrails of some mechanical beast, glinting dully in the gloom.
The water jacket, designed to circulate coolant around the core chamber and prevent the crystals from overheating, had ruptured. Its contents—water mixed with mineral salts to improve heat transfer—had long since boiled away or spilled into the earth, leaving only rust-stained metal and the acrid smell of scorched ceramic lining. The radiator fins, twisted and blackened, bore evidence of a catastrophic thermal failure. Whatever had brought this plane down, the Aether Rotator had died violently—either from damage sustained in the attack, or from being pushed far beyond its operational limits in a desperate attempt to escape.
Steam still hissed faintly from the ruptured coolant lines, thin wisps curling upward into the canopy. The smell of burnt metal and scorched stone hung heavy in the air.
Small fires had started in the wreckage, flickering weakly, their light casting dancing shadows across the twisted metal. They licked at fuel lines and canvas, but the dampness of the forest kept them from spreading. Smoke curled upward in thin, lazy spirals, disappearing into the canopy above.
The tail section had snapped off entirely, lying on its side thirty feet from the main wreckage. Its surface was gouged with deep, parallel scratches—four lines, evenly spaced, as if something with massive claws had raked across the metal.
Silence had returned to the Wicked Forest, but it was a different silence now. Heavier. Watchful. The kind of silence that came after violence, when the world was still processing what had just happened.
The wreckage lay broken and bleeding, a monument to a fall from the sky.
And somewhere, deep in the shadows between the trees, something moved.
From the darkness, a figure emerged.
It was the brown cow.
The same one that had licked Amir's face in that field in Oakhaven, what felt like a lifetime ago. The same bovine creature that had stared down at him with an expression of profound boredom. It wandered into the clearing by accident, drawn perhaps by curiosity or the faint smell of something unusual carried on the wind.
It approached the wreckage slowly, its hooves crunching softly on the debris-strewn ground. It paused at the edge of the impact crater, lowering its head to sniff at the black-red slick pooled there. The smell was wrong—metallic, chemical, mixed with something organic and rotten. The cow snorted, unimpressed, and moved on.
The cow wandered past the shattered Aether Rotator, its nose twitching at the acrid smell of scorched ceramic and burnt metal. Wisps of steam still rose from the ruptured coolant lines. It stared at the empty brass housings for a moment, head tilted, as if trying to understand what had once been there. Then it lost interest.
It found the leather glove—the one with fingers still curled as if grasping something that was no longer there—and sniffed it carefully. Its wet nose left a glistening trail across the worn leather, darkening the already blood-stained material. It gave the glove an experimental nudge with its muzzle, pushing it slightly across the ground. Then it lifted its head and licked its nose with a long, pink tongue, tasting the air, tasting the wrongness that clung to everything in this place.
The cow continued its aimless exploration, stepping over twisted metal and shattered glass with the same bovine indifference it showed to everything. It paused to sniff at the torn map, its edges still smoking faintly, then moved on when it proved inedible.
It wandered toward the fuselage, the massive split in the plane's belly like a wound that had never healed. The cow peered inside, its large, dark eyes reflecting the dim interior. Blood had pooled inside, mixing with oil and rainwater, creating a viscous, foul-smelling soup. The cow snorted again, more forcefully this time, as if offended by the stench.
It backed away from the fuselage and continued its circuit of the wreckage. It paused near the tail section—the one lying on its side, its surface gouged with deep, parallel scratches. Four lines, evenly spaced. The cow stared at the marks for a long moment, its head lowering as it sniffed at the gouges. The metal was cold, but there was something else there. A scent. Faint, but present. Something that made the cow's nostrils flare and its ears twitch.
Predator.
But the cow, in its infinite bovine wisdom, did not understand the concept of danger. It had never been hunted. It had never needed to run. It existed in a world of grass and sun and the occasional farmer with a bucket of feed. The scratches meant nothing to it.
It lifted its head, chewing on nothing, its jaw working in that slow, rhythmic way that cows do. Then it turned, its tail swishing lazily behind it, and began to amble back toward the edge of the clearing. Back toward the safety of the deeper forest, where the grass was softer and the world made sense.
It took one step.
Two steps.
Three steps.
Then the world ended.
There was no warning. No sound of approach. No rustle of leaves or snap of branches. One moment, the cow was walking. The next, a shadow fell over it—massive, absolute, blotting out what little light filtered through the canopy.
CRUNCH.
The sound was wet and final. Ribs shattered. Spine snapped. The back half of the cow—hindquarters, rear legs, tail—disappeared in that single, violent bite. Something's throat worked, muscles contracting in waves, pulling the mass of flesh and bone down into its gullet.
The front half—head, shoulders, forelegs still twitching with dying nerve impulses—collapsed forward with a meaty thud. Its eyes stared at nothing. From the open cavity where the midsection had been, intestines spilled out in glistening loops, steaming faintly in the cold air. Blood poured in thick, pulsing gouts, soaking into the earth.
A massive shadow loomed over the remains.
Then it lowered its head toward the remaining half.
A tongue—long, forked, black as pitch—slithered out and tasted the air. Then jaws opened, impossibly wide, and swallowed.
The front half disappeared in two powerful gulps. A creature's throat worked, muscles contracting in waves, pulling the mass of flesh and bone down into its gullet. The sound was obscene—wet, grinding, the crunch of bones being crushed by internal pressure.
The body tensed as it processed the meal. Eyes closed for a moment, savoring the taste, the warmth, the life it had just extinguished.
Then they opened.
Burning green, like molten jade. The pupils were slit vertically, like a cat's, but far larger, far more alien. They held intelligence. They held hunger. They held malice.
Nothing remained of the cow but blood pooled on the ground and scattered fragments of bone too small to matter.
The creature's head lifted, those burning green eyes scanning the wreckage beyond. The shattered plane. The twisted metal. The blood-soaked cockpit.
It was looking for something.
Or someone.
The creature took a step toward the fuselage, its talons—each one as long as a sword, curved and wickedly sharp—sinking deep into the soft, blood-soaked earth. Its nostrils flared, scenting the air. Its eyes narrowed to slits, focusing with predatory intensity on the ruined cockpit.
It growled.
The sound was low, vibrating, resonating in the very bones of the forest. It was not a sound of anger. It was a sound of recognition. Of confirmation.
The prey had been here.
But the prey was gone.
The creature's lips curled back, revealing rows of teeth like obsidian daggers. It let out a sharp, frustrated hiss—a sound like steam escaping from a ruptured pipe, but far more organic, far more alive.
Then, with one final, dismissive glance at the wreckage, the creature turned.
And for the first time, it was fully visible in the pale light filtering through the canopy.
It was black. Not the black of night, but the black of something that had been burned, charred, stripped of all light and hope. Its scales were massive, each one the size of a dinner plate, overlapping in perfect geometric patterns. They gleamed faintly in the dim light, slick with the cow's blood.
Its body was colossal—easily thirty feet from snout to tail, built with the brutal efficiency of an apex predator. Every line, every curve, every ridge of muscle was designed for one purpose: to kill. Its legs were thick as tree trunks, corded with muscle.
Its wings, folded tight against its muscular back, were leathery and scarred. The membranes were a sickly grey-green where they weren't stained with old blood.
The skull was long and angular, built for tearing. The jaws were lined with rows of teeth, each one a masterpiece of evolutionary brutality. Obsidian-black, serrated along the edges, curved inward to prevent prey from escaping once caught. Some were as long as a man's forearm.
It was a wyvern.